I guess you can profit off of your crimes if you inform on your co-conspirators.
He and this FBI guy would approach random kids on IRC in order to entice them to join "his" prestigious hacker group. They weren't going after existing criminals, but going out of their way to create new ones. Largely underage children.
Even Jeremy Hammond is out since 2020, he'd been sentenced to 10 years.
Sabu worked hard to entrap more and more people, largely underage children, and had a lot of fun doing so.
This isn't a guy who simply made a deal to save his own ass and felt bad about it. Sabu never apologized, but rather proceeded to attack the people he'd entrapped.