Yet we only saw a small number of arrests come out of the 2008 housing crisis, despite widespread fraud. The few cases that were successfully prosecuted involved 9 and 10 figure fraud operations.
At the core of the issues is the idea that ignorance of the law is no excuse. It may sound unfair that everyone can be bound by the law regardless of whether or not they understand every line, but the alternative requires that we let people off the hook for simply claiming they didn't understand the law.
In this case, the crime wasn't a simple mistake. The Michelle character in this story thought it was a creative loophole in the law that allowed her to fudge the accounting numbers in favor of the company by arbitrarily using the lowest share price of the month instead of the share price at time of issue.
This isn't the type of decision that one accidentally makes. It requires deliberate effort to search out and use the monthly low share price instead of the share price at time of issue. Ben Horowitz was fortunately skeptical, and consulted the general counsel for a proper reading of the law.