You conclude that whole original CN group had one goal and that is was to scam ppl out of their money, but actually world is much more complex than you suggest. I'll offer alternative scenario by assuming that not every person is the same and that within that group members had different motives for participation. Some may be interested in a technology, some in human rights, other just didn't wont in the future for their girlfriends/wifes to know where they spend all of their money, some wished to produce monetary platform they can invest in long-term in and finally some just wonted to get fruits of their labor quickly and non-transparently. It is not your only mistake that you do not see spectrum of possible motives, with in a group of ppl, but you neglect the fact that there are more repressive states in the World than one you have in the US. This whole 2y in deep web mining by small groups around the globe claim could have been an attempt to anonymise development path of CN, and i can hardly see what is wrong with that. After all, they are not the first who gave monetary platform and wanted to stay anonymous, remember “Satoshi group”? I couldn't care less if they come from China, India, Russia or Iran, as proven later they gave cryptographically solid platform to the rest of the World - a private one that is arguably more valuable than transparent one (in altruistic sense).