The vast, vast majority of the consumers will not go to the trouble of carefully tracking and reporting illegal solicitation calls. So the solicitors never get into trouble in the first place and thus there is no fine.
They use techniques that mask their caller-ID. VOIP carrier?. "Fly-by-night" long distance carrier that simply doesn't pass along the data?
Even if a consumer does report a complaint, the authorities only act upon receiving a great many complaints that are solidly substantiated. Again, the chance that will happen is very small.
It was a common trick in the old days for scammers to rent a storefront and fake a busy business, do their thing for a few months, then take off before the victims and authorities could react. By the time they do, they only find an empty store, the criminals are long gone.
In the modern world, it's a lot easier, no physical property (and expense) is required. Just create a website or telephone carrier, which thanks to deregulation and our beloved "open world*" is very easy to do. Remember the problem with illegal long distance carrier switching?
*See Pat's comments on this in a separate post issued today.In my opinion, the problems we have today result from the lingering "anti-Bell" attitude some people have. Note the caustic response to me not long ago from one poster claiming the baby-Bells still had a monopoly. This attitude resulted in a "wide open" policy for the Internet and the telephone system. The problem was that criminals take quick advantage of this. It's made all the worse since this is an intangible service where there's no physical presence or controls.
In the tangible real world, we still require new businesses to meet all the laws and regulations to protect the public, yet we exempt new Internet and telephone providers because we want "competition". Do we exempt a brand new restaurant from the health code because we want a new choice to eat out? (I guess some people think we should.)
[public replies, please] [ TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am getting sort of ambivilent on the 'Network Neutrality' issue. Just wait until the 'time out period' agreed to by Bell expires in a couple years. Very few of these fool spammer/scammers will be able to afford AT&T's prices for fast network connectivity. PAT]