Of course it is quite likely that literally the most common result of petty exaggerations is it doesn’t matter as the applicants would have gotten the same decision anyway. Like when 95% of the decisions are rejections anyway, there are likely quite a few applicants who exaggerated one or more things and it simply didn’t help enough to get them admitted. Conversely, if a college is largely admitting on the numbers, or at least above certain thresholds, petty exaggerations about other factors may also have been irrelevant to acceptances.
What we don’t know is how often applicants to selective holistic review colleges are suspected of dishonesty by their readers and quietly rejected without anyone outside Admissions, including the applicant, being told that was a material consideration.
I actually suspect that happens more than most realize. What I don’t know is how that would balance against the cases where some unsuspected falsehood actually is material to getting an applicant admitted.
So even holding aside ethics (which I do not actually hold aside), I would personally advise against inauthenticity in applications as a result of these uncertainties and unascertainable degrees of risk.
But I realize there are some circles in which applicants know some kids who in some way were inauthentic and got accepted to selective colleges, and they don’t know of anyone rejected where they were told inauthenticity is why they were rejected, and they interpret all that as evidence that inauthencity works.