Scamming as a male can actually improve your reputation. Donald Trump is currently the president of the united states despite years of ripping people off. If Bernie Madoff could run as a republican senator, I'd given him decent odds to win.
Here’s how I think it makes sense: accountability for unethical behavior arrives via more or less direct routes depending on who you are.
The more you look like a high-status leader, the longer it will take, and the more likely it arrives as a fine or a suspended sentence followed by an eventual redemption story published in the New Yorker or equivalent.
But targeting other high-status people ejects you from the white glove treatment.
I don't think it's that simple. If Bernie Sanders were an unknown, but had stabbed Iryna Zarutska on video and walked off saying he got that white girl, I'm pretty sure he would've still gone to jail and been subject to the death penalty. It's more than high-status people generally don't do that sort of thing, because you probably didn't get where you were if you were that unintelligent, violent, and impulsive.
In fact, in that exact case the chap who did it was treated far too leniently by the justice system and they've un-"Progressived" the law in some ways to make it so he would never be able to do that again. Which is progress. Or at least the undoing of Progress.
This is true, but I think my point still holds. If he were to get of jail, say by donating a substantial sum to Trump and then coincidentally getting a full pardon. And then he ran, I don't think that his infamy as a scammer would hurt him. If anything, that fame and name recognition would help. He could just lie and say he was framed and set up and yada yada and people would believe him.
