It's one thing when you are maybe stealing from one job to pay for the next job just hoping that somehow you'll get a break and everyone will end up paid.

It's another when you are stealing from one contractor or one customer and buying yourself a country club membership with it.

Also, it's like if you expanded too fast and couldn't do all the work but at least the work that you did manage to do was good, then maybe you just got in over your head. But if the work you did was shit, and you actively lied about it and ripped people off even when you had the funds, then the whole thing was never anything more than a rip off scheme.

Also he was mainly stealing from his own partners, leaving them in the lurch financially instead of him, and then on top of that he threw them under the bus in his legal defense.