That's a strawman. I'm pretty darn sure they're not claiming it never happened in the past. Only that it is becoming significantly more widespread than it used to be.
I think you're going to have an incredibly hard time making a compelling case that no such trend exists, given the statistics (even on this particular issue in the article, never mind other issues) would very likely strongly suggest the opposite.
The ‘winner’ is he who scams the hardest without getting consequences.