Just a wild guess, but my guess is that they intended to run everything legitimately, but bought into their own hype, and then got trapped by their egos into no

Just a wild guess, but my guess is that they intended to run everything legitimately, but bought into their own hype, and then got trapped by their egos into not admitting defeat. Once honestly admitting defeat was off the table, I'm not sure there were any non-fraudulent options left. I'm not saying the fraud is excusable, but it's entirely understandable how they may have been trapped by their own egos.