[s1artibartfast]

I have the inverse opinion.

I think the cost to society for these types of financial crimes is minimal, and close to zero.

She wasted some specific investors money, which is bad. However, the financial crime has basically no impact on the average person.

[quickthrower2]

Except people not lying and deceiving about their businesses to investors, or in other words trust, is the cornerstone of civilisation.

A corollary is romance scammers who get $100k has no impact, as long as the victim has more money saved up.

[s1artibartfast]

I basically agree. The point of punishment is to maintain Trust and standards in business dealings. This is very important.

That said, is a different argument and the idea that this specific Financial crime hurt lots of people throughout society. Nobody outside the investors was or will be harmed as long as trust and standards are maintained.

By comparison, I think the social harm would have been far greater if she defrauded $1 from every working american instead, instead 140M from 14 investors

[Ekaros]

Wouldn't the misallocation of funds be actually very big impact? Think of all the money spend on engineering, marketing, etc. were instead used on something productive?

[s1artibartfast]

They would have a big impact if they were used on something productive, but that is far from guaranteed. The money wasn't stolen from the community children's fund, which would naturally affect a lot of people. They were stolen from 14 investors, so the most likely alternative is that they would simply be used to further enrich those 14. Obviously, this is still wrong, but the number of people harmed in society is far fewer.