I saw a stat the other day that 30 under 30 alums have accounted for something like 2x the amount of fraud $ charges as VC $ raised which I thought was fitting... the list is a magnet for charlatans
That being said, yes, there’s quite a lot of vain people in there.
To raise funds someone has to actually give up money. When it comes to government prosecution and lawsuits the government and aggrieved parties are more or less free to use motivated reasoning, mental gymnastics and other sorts of faulty logic to make whatever fanciful claims they want so long as there's some shred of a reason for the claim. There's no check being cut, no skin in the game so the numbers aren't ever as grounded in reality as fundraising numbers. These "reality inspired" numbers then gets haggled down to a numbers that are supported by evidence over the course of court proceedings. And then the internet peanut gallery compares the fanciful initial headline to the settlement that is supported by hard evidence and gets their jimmies rustled.
That said I'm sure that list is full of shysters and slime balls.