No, your logic doesn't hold. The distinction being drawn here is between civil and criminal liability. Operating an unlicensed taxi service in most municipalities (maybe all of them) is a civil infraction, not a crime.
The founder in the linked article thought that she was on the right side of the line. She wasn't. You personally might think you're too smart to[1] fall afoul of this kind of thing and that all your cheating[2] will be non-prosecutable.
But quite frankly most "criminally liable" misrepresentations to investors aren't prosecuted (basically none of them are), so the fact that this one was is more a statement about the influence of JP Morgan and the mind of this one prosecutor. And blanket statements that absolutely none of Uber's shenanigans were prosecutable seem laughable. Crimes abound.
The point wasn't to nitpick about crimes and penalties. It was that this crime happened in the context of a culture that structurally encouraged it, and we would all do well to recognize that instead of nitpicking fake reasons why it would never happen to us.
[1] The ironic analogy to hubris in security analysis isn't lost on me
[2] Because again in this world All Founders Cheat a Little Bit. We all know it.
