Thankfully, law enforcement thwarted their successful efforts at theft,

It's like theft. We can have every law there is, but we're never going to eliminate it completely. It's the same with fraud. There's always going to be some people who take the short cut.

[Theft was common.] It's the law of the playground, ... a journey back to boyhood, where if you wanted somebody's sandwich you beat him up and took it.

I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes — can be called socialism. It is not this kind of plunder that systematically threatens the foundations of society. Anyway, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the command of these gentlemen. The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. Long before the Revolution of February 1848 — long before the appearance even of socialism itself — France had provided police, judges, gendarmes, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds for the purpose of fighting illegal plunder. The law itself conducts this war, and it is my wish and opinion that the law should always maintain this attitude toward plunder.

They were not Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they were stealing from children and giving to themselves.

Winners never cheat and cheaters never win...but sometimes they find themselves in court pleading guilty.