One of the things you have to understand about fraud is that much of it isn't rationally planned from the get-go. People get into situations and get caught up in the dynamics of them.
Imagine a founder. He has an idea he thinks is brilliant. A sure money-maker. He's a bit of a dreamer, and objective observers would question whether it's possible. But the nay-sayers have been wrong before, and he believes in the idea. So he goes looking for money.
As part of that process, he learns to pitch. He figures out the most convincing things to say, and how to say them with maximum persuasion. Is what he saying true or correct? That doesn't really matter. It might not even be knowable at this point. The key incentives for him are whether people respond emotionally in ways that they give him money.
So imagine he does that and he gets the money. He has some investors who expect big returns. They may not really understand the topic, but they liked his confidence, and they too started to believe. But what they really want is more money back, and their belief is going to be partly contingent on seeing that happen.
Our founder starts to spend the money, trying to make it real. Maybe the product works. Maybe he has some success selling it. (Maybe he is even selling it despite it not working, a surprisingly common outcome.) It's not going as well as he hoped, but he's still confident. He still believes. Because that's the performance his investors want for him. But he's used to putting a positive spin on things, so he tells investors what they want to hear that it's going great.
At some point, some of the investors get nervous. They expected returns. He led them to believe there would be big returns. So he pays some of those people some money. An accountant might say he has to pay them profits, not other investors' money. But the money's all jumbled up both in his head and in the world. If there's any impropriety, something his brain will anxiously skip over, he knows he'll make it right in the end. Because this is going to be a big success.
From there, the cycle continues. The founder digs the hole deeper and deeper over time. As long as he's confident, as long as he performs success, new money will keep rolling in. And with it comes hope. Maybe it will all work out! Maybe they'll be so successful that they'll pay everybody back and nobody will notice a little early corner-cutting.
Objectively, of course, things are getting more and more obviously criminal. But there's nobody objective around. The founder is instead surrounded by dupes, fools, and the complicit. To the extent that anybody honestly recognizes the criminality, they mostly don't talk about it or they get out ASAP.
So to answer your question, there is generally no planned endgame, the same way I didn't have a planned endgame for eating a lot of cheeseburgers in my 20s. I may have heard about the consequences, but they didn't affect my behavior. It's not that I had a bad plan. I not only had no plan, but didn't think enough about the future to even have a place in my mind where a plan would go.
Imagine a founder. He has an idea he thinks is brilliant. A sure money-maker. He's a bit of a dreamer, and objective observers would question whether it's possible. But the nay-sayers have been wrong before, and he believes in the idea. So he goes looking for money.
As part of that process, he learns to pitch. He figures out the most convincing things to say, and how to say them with maximum persuasion. Is what he saying true or correct? That doesn't really matter. It might not even be knowable at this point. The key incentives for him are whether people respond emotionally in ways that they give him money.
So imagine he does that and he gets the money. He has some investors who expect big returns. They may not really understand the topic, but they liked his confidence, and they too started to believe. But what they really want is more money back, and their belief is going to be partly contingent on seeing that happen.
Our founder starts to spend the money, trying to make it real. Maybe the product works. Maybe he has some success selling it. (Maybe he is even selling it despite it not working, a surprisingly common outcome.) It's not going as well as he hoped, but he's still confident. He still believes. Because that's the performance his investors want for him. But he's used to putting a positive spin on things, so he tells investors what they want to hear that it's going great.
At some point, some of the investors get nervous. They expected returns. He led them to believe there would be big returns. So he pays some of those people some money. An accountant might say he has to pay them profits, not other investors' money. But the money's all jumbled up both in his head and in the world. If there's any impropriety, something his brain will anxiously skip over, he knows he'll make it right in the end. Because this is going to be a big success.
From there, the cycle continues. The founder digs the hole deeper and deeper over time. As long as he's confident, as long as he performs success, new money will keep rolling in. And with it comes hope. Maybe it will all work out! Maybe they'll be so successful that they'll pay everybody back and nobody will notice a little early corner-cutting.
Objectively, of course, things are getting more and more obviously criminal. But there's nobody objective around. The founder is instead surrounded by dupes, fools, and the complicit. To the extent that anybody honestly recognizes the criminality, they mostly don't talk about it or they get out ASAP.
So to answer your question, there is generally no planned endgame, the same way I didn't have a planned endgame for eating a lot of cheeseburgers in my 20s. I may have heard about the consequences, but they didn't affect my behavior. It's not that I had a bad plan. I not only had no plan, but didn't think enough about the future to even have a place in my mind where a plan would go.