Cecil Jacobson lied and did not conform to standard practices, but the standard practice at the time was for the physician to conscript an arbitrary medical student. Aside from the times that he substituted his sperm for the husband's, he just grabbed control of a variable that no one else cared enough to steer. The difference today is not so much that people worry about fraud, but that the patient exhibits control (and is allowed control by the establishment). Caring about fraud is a consequence of caring at all.

If Jacobson and a colleague had swapped sperm, it would have come to the same thing, while providing the claimed distance between the donor and the recipient. And it would have been close to the standard procedure, except that the donors would have been older and thus less fertile.