It's tongue and cheek deterrent, it's effectively ex-communcaiton from their social circles which is where they get their attaboy/girl encouragement that this is acceptable behaviour. They don't see themselves as part of the hoi polloi, and bending the rules to their advantage is called "smart".
Why do you assume that it's the social status of the person that drives this behavior? Why do you assume that people "with money" find this behavior acceptable?
They are more likely to. There is a fairly strong inverse relationship between wealth / money and morality. They are many dubious things that will increase your earnings and franking people less willing to do this stuff tend to make less money and come from famalies that made less money.
For a specific and kind of mind blowing example the inverter of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction decided not to become a mult-billionaire as he felt starting a company would be worse for humanity and somewhat sketchy.
On the other hand zuckerberg would not have become a billionaire without several amorale choices. I am not saying he is vastly more evil than the average person, but clearly not the kind of guy you want to have any actual power.
