PR campaigns to rehabilitate white-collar criminals so they can resume their activities are an old practice, but have been supercharged by the internet and the ability to use oppositional culture war framing to get people on your side. Elizabeth Holmes and Martin Shkreli are both out of prison and running big rehab campaigns, and Sam Bankman-Fried is clearly angling for a Trump pardon (see his mom's big open letter and all the submarine stories lately about how "nobody actually lost any money at FTX! what was the crime??")

It's especially big in crypto because the whole community has a conspiratorial "the System is against us" mindset, and if you can successfully tap into that and convince people "I was targeted by The Man, man" all your crimes can be washed away.