Rossi is correct; he did nothing wrong.
Read the Lehigh Valley Marathon rules, and tell me where it says that a participant has to actually run every bit of the course, from start to finish, in order to be counted as a finisher, and to receive a finishing time.
Sure, we all ASSUME that you would have to run the entire course on foot, under your own power, to be counted as a finisher.
But by the letter of the Lehigh Valley Marathon rules, nothing prohibits activating your chip, hitching a ride to the finish line, and crossing the line to register a finishing time.
(Something that would prohibit this "course-cutting" strategy would be a phrase somewhere, ANYWHERE in their race documentation, that says something along the lines of "Participants must cover every inch of the course, on foot, under their own power, in order to be credited with finishing the race, and to receive an official finishing time.")
The wording of all of these statements continues to be carefully chosen, to avoid saying things like "ran the entire distance" because:
1. Rossi knows that he didn't actually run the entire distance. (Hence, the "no evidence of wrongdoing" statement, which sounds authoritative, but ultimately is vacuous, since cutting the course can't be "wrongdoing" if there's no rule against it.)
2. The Lehigh Valley Marathon knows that they don't have a rule that explicitly prohibits what Rossi likely did. As ugly and as wrong as it sounds, a shrewd lawyer (which Rossi may or may not have) could very well argue that no matter how Rossi managed to cross the finish line, he was still listed as a finisher, and received an official finishing time, which is all that really matters, in the absence of specific rules prohibiting certain means of achieving a finish.
To be clear, regardless of the legality of this, in my opinion, neither party is taking the moral "high ground" on this issue.
And that's the part that's infuriating everybody, that's generated 12,000+ posts about this.
But, like it or not, both Rossi and LVM are legally in the clear, and have no motivation to do anything differently than they've already done . . . provided that nobody can come up with a way to "shame" them into it. (What the BroJos have done as far as the reward money is a start, but not enough on its own to change anybody's mind about this.)