He also had fun, or at least his writeup sounded like he enjoyed his adventure.
Right now I'm remodeling my home. It's laborious, costly, consumes resources that could be spent on building housing for those less fortunate, occupies the time of employees at the home stores I frequent when I ask questions, but I enjoy it. One has a hard time calling it "exploitation", but aren't I exploiting resources that are available to me for personal gain (albeit in a very literal definition)?
What you do with the resources you control is an interesting question. But the one I'm pointing at here is how you get those resources.
If you read about scam artists from the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a lot of innovation where people filled their pockets in ways that were perfectly legal but negative sum for the society as a whole. (Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil's biography is a fun read.) This led to a whole new series of laws, including those relating to wire fraud.
How those innovative scammers spent their ill-gotten gains is a separate question from asking whether the way they filled their pockets was right.
Right now I'm remodeling my home. It's laborious, costly, consumes resources that could be spent on building housing for those less fortunate, occupies the time of employees at the home stores I frequent when I ask questions, but I enjoy it. One has a hard time calling it "exploitation", but aren't I exploiting resources that are available to me for personal gain (albeit in a very literal definition)?