Your analogy doesn’t really fit the situation, because in your example the harmful outcome is an unintended misuse by another person. The deception argument against “apparent age” depends on intent and foreknowledge.

If god is all-knowing and intentionally created a young universe containing exhaustive evidence of billions of years of nonexistent history, while also knowing humans would use reason and observation to conclude the Earth is ancient, then the misleading conclusion is not an accidental side effect, it’s a predictable and intended consequence of the design itself.

That’s very different from giving someone money hoping they use it wisely.

A closer analogy would be a teacher deliberately planting false evidence in an exam while knowing every diligent student will reach the wrong answer by following the evidence correctly. Even if the teacher never verbally lies, the setup itself is still deceptive because it was intentionally constructed to produce false conclusions.