What point are you trying to make? Any company offering above market compensation is engaging in illegal activity?
"Big law" firms are a good example of this too: they pay way more than some random family law practice.
What types of clients might those be?
But some companies have the choice of hiring, for example, one really great engineer for $500k, and one very solid one for $250k.
Another organization might want to hire three engineers for $250k.
A third, perhaps, wants to hire seven at $100k.
They're all spending the same amount of money, but not every company can "afford" that spend -- especially if they need several engineers working on unique feature sets.
I just think it's a leap to say that every company paying more than average market value is criminal.
But the context of the conversation is white collar crime, corruption, or unfair practices, and paying significantly above market rate.
Costco is a very egalitarian organization. They pay is flatter across the entire hierarchy. Lower rank people are paid more, higher ranked people are paid less. They are a super ethical organization, I'm a big fan (though they could do better at incentivizing innovation).
It's just not the same pattern as paying gigantic amounts of money to hoard up "CS grads" or lawyers.
Costco has a rep for paying their cashiers, food handlers, and stocker teams well, comparatively speaking. Their IT teams are mostly outsourced, like all large companies, and aren't impressive by Seattle rates.
At some point does complacency with scammers become racketeering or criminals conspiracy? Knowledge is an element of crime and they know people are being scammed yet look away from it.
To quote Randall Munroe, "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."