No, that's fraud. A scam can be legal. Timeshares, "Winter Wonderlands", many extended warranties, planned obsolescence, weaselly technically-correct advertising (overpromising to investors is sort of this) pretty much everything hidden in ToC screeds, some MLM schemes, basically all cryptocurrency (and a lot of normal finance to be fair), etc etc.

Many graduate into criminality, but it's not required.

Oh, well the whole economic system is a scam then, so as long as you're stuck inside a scam system, you succeed in the system by scamming.