Reading this article is remarkably comical. I understand what they did is labeled as criminal. Yet it's funny how a lot of businesses are similar and in this world they're legal.
"They showed no regard for the unnecessary costs they imposed on their victims - I would say they treated them with contempt." - Hmm that isn't new.
There are a couple of Reply All episodes that talk about almost this exact same scam. Fake taxi service lost and found sites, fake DMV sites etc.
https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/76-lost-in-a-cab
https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/78-very-quickly-to-the...
This site does something similar for green card lottery: https://www.usafis.org
They do offer a clear disclaimer though.
I wonder how they processed payments, and what their "getaway" plan was, beyond "let's hope we don't get caught".
freecreditreport.com
Doesn't seem that different to what lawyers do on a daily basis.
What interesting to me is just how prevalent this sort of thing is. For a long time (at least 10 years), students applying for financial aid in the US are routinely told to 1) fill out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and 2) not click the top few results when they google it because they'll be semi-scam sites that charge you money to "help" you fill out the form[1].
Which is, as near as I can tell, exactly what these people have been convicted of doing? Maybe these people shaded the truth a bit more; the FAFSA application sites tend to have disclaimers. Eg https://www.fafsa-application.com/ has a fairly prominent disclaimer, presumably because they believe anything less will get them sued.
[1]: Although when I tested it just now, it seems Google has got better about filtering them out of the organic results, at least, since I went through college. Which is good for students I guess.