Why do wealthy people commit fraud when they already have millions?

Rabbi Landau explains that people who already have hundreds of millions in the bank risk everything because they think the finish line is a number. “The finish line is inner peace.”

“A man who doesn’t have enough inside will never have enough outside.” So even with a hundred million, he feels he is missing another few hundred million. That is why King Solomon said, “Ohev kesef lo yisba kesef,” if you love money, money will never satisfy you, “because money becomes your oxygen and you can’t stop breathing.”

He compares it to salt water: the more you drink, the thirstier you get. “So the goal post doesn’t move because you are ambitious. It moves because you never build the one thing that makes a man honest.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Wealthy people who commit fraud think the finish line is a number, but the real finish line is inner peace.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Without “enough” inside, no amount outside is enough, and money becomes like oxygen a person cannot stop breathing.

What may be behind it

Loving money works like drinking salt water: the more you drink, the thirstier you get. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the finish line moves the very moment you touch it.

Deepest human truth

The goalpost keeps moving not because of ambition but because the person never built the inner sense of enough that keeps a man honest.