Worked on a bunch of SMS apps including a big one for samples/notifications and it was insane how the approval process was for the short code and all the support you need around it.

I am always amazed that scammers get around all of that. A weak platform could do that if they were allowed or essentially white listed then play plausible deniability about moderating these.

SMS was built off of the network diagnostic codes/network and so they regulate it heavily. The only way these scams are working is due to piggy backing on something that has the ability to spin up new shortcodes without much oversight.