How people rationalize fraud - Kelly Richmond Pope?

Imagine you're playing a game where everyone gets cookies, but some people sneak extra ones without being caught, and they pretend it wasn’t fair, even though they know it was.

In real life, when someone does something sneaky like taking more cookies (which is like fraud), they might say things like "I didn’t mean to be unfair" or "Everyone else did it too." This is called rationalizing, and it’s how people make themselves feel better about being sneaky.

It's kind of like when you eat the last cookie from the jar, and then you say, "I was just saving it for later!" Even though everyone knows you just wanted it more. People who do fraud use similar tricks to convince themselves, and others, that what they did wasn’t really wrong.

Sometimes, people even believe their own stories! It's like they're playing a game where the rules change every time, and they get to be the one who decides how fair everyone is.