For someone without skills or who has a lot of student loan debt but no job, I can understand thew rationale of rolling the dice on low-scale fraud: if you succeed, you make a lot of money and are possibly set for life. If you fail, you go to a comfy dorm jail for 5 or so years, and then when you get out the prison will help arrange employment opportunities (these will not pay well , but it's better than nothing), and alluding to our era of moral ambiguity, sell the story as a Netflix special and go on the podcast circuit. Sure your record will be shot, but it's not like it matters if your prospects were bleak to begin with.