If you or I are caught writing hot checks, we may very well do time. Ditto, if we sell a product we know to be defective. But what happens you may ask, if a rich person defrauds a nation of billions of dollars? If you have seen the Power Rangers, you know the answer. They come together into one super person called a corporation and buy their way out of the problem.
The Bank of America has had to pay billions in fines as a result of a long list of shady deals, dishonest presentation of information, unfair foreclosures and other acts that would probably put an individual in prison. If Al Capone had the option of joining his activities into the saftey net of corporate personhood, his businesses might still be alive today.
If the only punishment a “person” faces for theft is a fine, that fine soon becomes a cost of duing business. After some time for the public to forget, he or she can pass on the cost of misdeeds to customers or to the public coffers. As a Power Ranger, he or she would be too big to fail.