I know for a fact that people have been either AA'd or FRed for transactions that took place years ago, that would imply strongly that the banks are looking at every single transaction that these companies did. If you have reason to believe otherwise then please share but there's no logical reason to believe that anyone who is in this mess is going to fly under the radar.
Even if it's only half. It is scary. These schemes have hurt so many people.
In that lost messiah blog posting of the court case, if you read it, it's about how a "real estate developer" solicited a GEMACH to do the actual swiping for him (gotta, admit he's a smart one, wouldn't have thought to add that extra layer in to these convoluted transactions). They say in the brief that the gemach did this for him to encourage his donations. A lawyer can chime in if I'm misreading it but it looks like the gemach is suing the cardholder for the chargeback and the guy who got the money isn't even involved in the suit!
When the cardholder did the chargeback it was to the gemach, so no mater who wins this particular case, either the gemach or the cardholder will be paying the bank AND now the gemach can't process credit cards for people who want to make donations.If someone had told me last week that a relatively small group of people were doing this for a total amount of $50 mil, I would never have believed them. If the scale is so huge, it seems like there would be lots of other small businesses (or average people) doing this but just haven't defaulted the cardholder yet. As Dan said in is original DDMS post, if you are engaging in any kinds of these activities (even for someone in your family you are just trying to help) please stop and probably best to call an accountant and attorney.