[habosa]

It might not change anything, but I think the criminal penalties for scams need to be significantly raised.

The idea of reaching out to someone you don't know at all and attempting to steal their money by lying and betraying their confidence is morally disgusting. The type of people who can do this hundreds or thousands of times a day are criminals of the worst and least redeemable kind, yet if caught they would likely face a smaller penalty than someone who steals a single piece of jewelry from a store.

We are slowly losing our ability to trust each other because of the prevalence of scams which adds massive transaction costs to every legitimate exchange. These costs are unseen but they make almost everything we buy slower and more expensive.

[Eisenstein]

Increasing penalties has much less effect on crime than increasing the likelihood of them getting caught. If there is a slim chance of them getting caught it doesn't matter what the penalty is because they will do it anyway.

[renk]

Indeed. Moral depravedness is supposedly modeled by law. There is an uncanny overlap of scammers and normal economic activity though. That needs to change.