Wow, you can't do crime because it's illegal!
How do you explain the widespread availability of "drop" accounts in the US? Cybercrime forums are full of people offering services to "cash out" illicit bank transfers into cryptocurrency.
How do you explain the widespread availability of "drop" accounts in the US? Cybercrime forums are full of people offering services to "cash out" illicit bank transfers into cryptocurrency.
Integrating over all of the possible outcomes of wire-fraud, being put in prison is more likely than making millions of dollars and using them as you please.
Or, at least, enough people believe this, and also prefer not to be in prison, that they do not commit wire fraud. It might also be because it's difficult. (I don't personally know how I'd take up wire fraud, if I wanted to start.)
"Being put in prison" is a likely outcome because of complex and overlapping human constructs that have lead to power structures where other people can force you into a prison. This is why it's relevant that it's "illegal". Briefly, "we live in a society".
The kind of "shape" wire-fraud has (in terms of the likelihood of its outcomes, i.e. very high risk, low chance of reward) is found in many things. A lot of illegal things have this shape.
The above commenter probably assumed all this to be 'background'. With that "because you go to jail if you do that," is a succinct and basically correct statement, even if it is not prefaced with every possible exception.
Every Eastern European craigslist scammer has access to US business bank accounts to accept payments for their nonexistent cars and boats.
The answer is, it is illegal, and easy to catch, so people don't abuse it as much as they would if it wasn't illegal.
Why is it easy to catch? The OPs premise that you have to provide identification to open bank accounts is obviously false.
If you don't believe that deterrence is a real thing, there is a lot more human behavior that needs explanation than just the relative lack of ACH fraud.
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/russian-man-pleads-guilty-...
They do this, at giant scale. When you're earning tens of thousands of dollars per account, it's worth it to train people to go open bank accounts using fake passports.