> This stuff needs to be regulated,
Regulated? Fraud is illegal.
It needs to be PROSECUTED.
Regulated? Fraud is illegal.
It needs to be PROSECUTED.
If the government forms are byzantine and you go to a lawyer and pay them $250 to fill them for you, you aren't being scammed.
If you visit a web site that clearly tells you that it's a third party website, you can waste your time with the horrible government site, or you can pay 10 bucks and use their optimized form, you're not being scammed.
If the web site now shrinks their disclosure a bit, maybe moves it below the fold, jacks up the price... at some point 90% of the people would agree that they're "scamming" people, in the colloquial sense, but this lack of a clear line makes it hard to charge them criminally.
The way to handle this would be to
1. require clear disclosure for any kind of "online 'government bureaucracy help' service", with everything (font size, contrast, cannot be showing anything else at the same time to avoid drowning the disclosure out)
2. Make providing such "services" without the disclosure punishable by serious jail time, confiscation of any earnings, etc.
3. Actually enforce it, including through international arrest warrants, going after credit card providers when the scammers are abroad, etc.
4. Follow up to see if the problem went away and adjust the requirements until it does.
Omit any of these, and the problem will stay. And right now, none of these seems to happen.
Those companies are scamming you through the government, like they do with taxes
But let's not nitpick. The example number for a non-scam full-disclosure website was $10. That seems legitimate to me.
You provide the incentives to the countries to fix their problem by cutting them completely off. If someone using a bank in Cyprus did it, you tell Cyprus government that in 48 hours the Fed will block all transactions with that bank and you block it. They move to another bank, you repeat it. Eventually Cyprus government ( and Cyprus banks ) have to make a choice - continue to tolerate scammers using their banks and be locked out totally out of the US financial system or crack down on the scammers.
Follow the money and report the issue to the institutions along the line. If they refuse to shut down the scammers and to stop facilitating their crimes, shut the institutions down for being an accessory.
Don't get me wrong; I'd love to see them picking up trash on the side of the highway for next twenty years of their life, or worse. But calling everything "terrorism" really reminds me of the years following 2001.
YES - THE NAVY