A former employee was the first to publish a paper with only three authors. I am surprised you haven't heard about this.
Then a few hours later a paper was published with six authors (without one of the original three authors), ostensibly by the core team that has been working on this.
There should be much more detail on the Internet if you search for it.
Notably, the missing author from the second paper is the rogue employee who published the first paper. The order of the first two authors is the same for both papers.
earlier in the week, someone posted that the person who posted the paper early is someone who wanted to fund the project, but the researchers didn't want to include him. So he took as much data as he could collect and posted it publicly with the addition of his name. He is not a researcher or scientist for the team.
It's one of the reasons people were thinking this might not be a fraud.
Nobel prizes are capped to 3 people, and the speculation is that the rogue person published early to try and ensure they were one of the people that received it. No reason for infighting like that if you know it's a hoax.
Then a few hours later a paper was published with six authors (without one of the original three authors), ostensibly by the core team that has been working on this.
There should be much more detail on the Internet if you search for it.