financial illiteracy is a real problem in journalism. You can't really judge how egregious/successful these guys were without knowing the annualized NET revenue of this business.
And we don't even know if those numbers have been released to the public yet. (they probably haven't since expenses take a while to compile, whereas deposits into a bank account are easy to count)
Eevenue is a useful measurement of how large the operation was.
There is some information about profit in the article:
>The rent for one apartment was $3,225, but it was on Airbnb for $250 a night. Hypothetically, Mr. Beckman could cover a month’s rent by filling it with tourists for about two weeks. In just a few months, Mr. Beckman had booked more than 500 guests and generated about $84,000 from the building at 78 East 119th Street, according to the city’s lawsuit.