I'm confused how circulating legal tender between 2 parties could be cooking books or fraud. Each party can absolutely claim they made money from the transaction. The fact they lost money in a different transaction is a separate concern.
Gross Revenue is sometimes passed off as Revenue in reports, until you examine the fine print.
Rather than claim that they passed money around to make money, a nice income statement demonstrates that they made money.
Cooking up fake transactions to make an investor think there is business happening is the definition of fraud.