There are definitely tools at a network's disposal that can help find these people. Of course it gets much easier as the volume goes up, but greed is such that people like this are never satisfied with low lead counts.
Advertisers should already be scrubbing selectively. They should be capturing sub-ID data from the networks, then checking lead profitability on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis. They should then be pulling non-profitable affiliates from their campaigns. People with zero profitability (like this CPAExtreme guy), should be pulled AND have their leads reversed. I know this isn't technically scrubbing, but it effectively does the same.
The only no-no at DP seems to be faking out a signature before you have a high enough post count to "earn" one. One of my AM's got banned there for that in the past.
You hit the nail on the head, Steve. I've seen merchants not track on an affiliate-by-affiliate quality level, and raise payouts to an incentive publisher while lowering payouts to all other publishers due to a misunderstanding of quality, with no back-end checks. It's SO easy for any merchant with a half-capable technical team to integrate something like this into a lead-based system, even if they're forced to run manual reports every week. In the end, it works out better for legit affiliates and the advertiser, and helps to drive scum out of the industry (or to competitors of the advertiser, who will become unprofitable).
