Agreed: Helium 3 is bogus.
This is tantamount to selling investment shares in gasoline companies in 1700. As you point out, we can't even make the easily-fused isotopes break even in fusion reactions. The Helium-3 reaction is even harder, although its attractive for its relative lack of neutrons.
You want to make money in space, you find a nickel-iron asteroid, and start mining. The amount of expensive and useful metals in even a small one is staggering. I could see the investment needed to learn to live on the Moon paying off in asteroid mining and refining technologies.
Could see the Moon doing well as a tourist destination, too, although I think large Earth-orbiting space stations would do a lot better. A test case: How many tourists pay to go to Antarctica?