I think that we have a fundamental misunderstanding here. My stance is that the wrongdoing is not "fraud" because the passes which were sold were in fact valid

I think that we have a fundamental misunderstanding here. My stance is that the wrongdoing is not "fraud" because the passes which were sold were in fact valid passes for which the MBTA was not compensated. You seem to be interpreting my statements as claiming there was no wrongdoing, which isn't my claim. Law is not a magic, unknownable realm populated by wizards who have the sole ability to understand what it means. Law is not magic. But I am not a lawyer, and I don't think that many lawyers, let alone those who specialize in criminal prosecution or even intellectual property read Hacker News. Hence my claim that this is a complex issue for "us" to engage in, for which "we" are not fully qualified. My interest in this stems from the notion that we should be informed of the society we live in, and that Hacker News comment threads are places of philosophical discussion. Also, the Hacker News article uses the term "forged" instead of the article's "fake", and I think that both of these are incorrect. The passes produced were clearly valid, but unauthorized. If one hypothetically believes that this case does not qualify as "falsely makes" or that the bad actor here didn't have "intent to ... defraud", one is wrong. One is not just a little wrong, or arguably wrong, or sort of grey area wrong. I apparently lack your swagger. Given that the MBTA could not differentiate these passes from the ordinary pass, I claim that these passes are not "falsely made". In every way they behave as stolen passes, but not fake ones. Why does this matter? I suppose that I care because the headline "Forged Subway Passes" is the only reason this article belongs on Hacker News. But given that these are more "stolen" than "forged", there is nothing technically interesting about this event and it doesn't really belong here. But our discussion has been interesting, because you have presented compelling arguments that this is actually fraud. I still believe that it is not, but the process of arguing has made me develop my intuition of something that I wouldn't normally have cared about. I certainly wouldn't have realized that I thought the event was theft and not fraud.