Exactly this. He was born rich, and yet he came up with an endless stream of grifts throughout his life. This is unnecessary and reckless. I believe he does it because he has a deep inferiority complex and ripping off people gives him a feeling of superiority.
Your assumption is that it’s a Cartesian coordinate system with 90° angles. But that’s not necessarily the case. You can apply a sheer transformation to correct for the unusual appearance. When you do that, the angles change, but straight lines stay straight and parallels stay parallel. There’s a mathematical term for that, which I can’t remember right now.