alt Hacker NewsIf someone robs a bank, or steals a wallet, they're probably hoping to get as much money as they can. If that wallet happened to $1B in it, I don't think it makes the thief more heinous. If we sentence people based on the amount of money they manage to steal, we're sentencing them largely based on luck.
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It's not possible to accidentally steal $1B when your intention was to steal $10K. Scale does matter - this isn't "luck".
But if the wallets each only contain $100 and you steal enough of them to get to $1 billion, that is qualitatively different from stealing a single wallet. The man committed fraud repeatedly and caused financial hardships for tons of people. He wasn't lucky in how much he managed to steal, that was a combination of effort, skill, and reckless disregard for the wellbeing of others.
If you shoot someone and hit their head killing them or just their ear, its a matter of luck (and possibly skill), the charges are different. The justice system judges based on intent as well as outcome (i.e. execution X luck).