I think it's because a lot of "hustle" culture and stories of the early business careers of very successful founders involve a bunch of stuff that sure looks like fraud or otherwise like something that ought to be illegal (it may not be, but I mean that it feels like the kind of thing that ought to be illegal, to a normal person) that works out great for them and sure looks like it was a necessary step on their journey to hundreds of millions of dollars and being on the cover of TIME or whatever.

Add in normal corporate business practices just feeling gross as hell on a pretty regular basis, and I can kinda see why people might see this as not really that different from how you're "supposed to" do things—if you aren't a chump, anyway.

Kinda like the college admissions bribery scandal. There was a lot of "oh, so their crime was not being rich enough to bribe the correct way?" in people's reactions, because... well, the system's officially corrupt, in a lot of people's opinions, so prosecuting unofficial corruption feels more like a very fancy organized crime racket putting the screws to the (relatively) little guy to protect their own corruption, than good old feel-good justice.