Because plausible deniability. It is obviously difficult to create a legal system that could prosecute any of the executives. It’s obvious that all of the well seasoned executives were hoping to pawn this off into a bigger fool, but can you prove it in court? And should that even be illegal?

All that happened was a bunch of rich people paid for a guy to live like a king. They certainly suffered financial losses, even though they may still be rich.

A bunch of rich people lost money gambling on a guy. Laws requiring transparency before access to public markets brought it to down to earth. It seems to me like the system worked well.