Do you honestly not see the difference between
A) A group rate has been established with Disney to support hundreds if not thousands of people who would like to visit the resorts, parks, and restaurants. These people have someone who is in charge of handling these preparations and guiding them through the process.
B) I am a tour guide who will give anyone a private tour without Disney's approval as long as they pay me $300 an hour, oh by the way let me remind you thats a 33% discount from the rate Disney charges and I also abuse the handicapped system to allow you to skip the lines.
That's just it - no matter which way you slice it, this was a shady shadow business to begin with, and the people doing it full well knew it. They may have deluded themselves into thinking otherwise, but it's no different than any other shady business you get away with for a time.
Eventually, the jig is up, so hopefully instead of blowing these massive profits they were making on stupid things they really couldn't long-term afford, they stocked away the cash to weather the storm until they find legitimate work. Unfortunately for them, in my experience with people who have "ventures" like this - they often aren't that forward thinking and are going to be selling off the boats and expensive cars they bought for a lot less than they paid for them.
In the end, what seems to have gotten them was the "worse" of the bad apples who pushed this too far, charged way too much and got so bold as to advertise the "discount" they were offering versus Disney's official service. They got cocky. Some of these guys were making thousands of bucks
a day with zero overhead and nothing but their time.
When you see how many were doing it, how much they were charging, and often they were doing it - some of these guys were easily making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year each - anyone who expected activity that was potentially costing Disney millions in potential income a year that to continue indefinitely right under the mouse's nose was kidding themselves.
