Depending on who you are, half a million dollars a year is not necessarily 'petty' cash. Also, people risk jail time over petty cash constantly in all walks of life.
It's petty in the sense that you're likely to be able to get sufficient fraction of that not to need to worry about money.
At that point if you're motivated by more cash rather than not being seriously screwed, well, you don't sounds rational to me. That cash just doesn't have much value to you, and the risk does have cost to you.
