The parent comment was just trying to make a suggestion, that if that scientist had stopped before the tide has turned against China in the past few years, then he probably would've gotten away with it. He did the calculations right for his chances of not being caught being pretty good back in 2012, he just simply didn't adjust them as the time passed and the situations changed. Or maybe he did the adjustment, but a lot of people tend lose their minds and get too greedy to stop before it is too late when it comes to big money.
Furthermore, juxtaposing the two statements implies a sort of grey area like that doesn’t make sense here. It’s hard to draw any conclusion other than greed and/or malice.
But then again, people can be smart in some areas and quite error prone in others. This was a really terrible miscalculation.
This is pretty black and white, assuming the evidence presented is legit, which he will have the opportunity to oppose in court.