Yeah it was just straight up theft with what they were doing.

And do it in a large enough quantity that it makes financially insensitive to do it at a large scale vs small

One example would be the ai data centers Musk has that he illegally had gas generators installed at. The fine compared to not running them at all is small in comparison to keep them on. This is why it needs to be a percentage or increasing stack of cost not just a small fine every time.