You can prosecute someone in your home country and even change policies with enough political support. Best of luck doing this in China without getting 're-educated'.

But note that as always: that's too late. By then, the damange has already been done, and the person you take out of the system is simply replaced by anyone else. Card skimmers sure as hell haven't gone away just because we wised up to them: we now just pay A LOT MORE on law enforcement, and all that gets us is law enforcement now at least staying in lockstep with the skimmer's increased sophistication.

Now imagine how much it'll cost to stay in lockstep when the level of sophistication becomes "a single component the size of half a grain of rice".

"Free", no. Much less affected, yes. Organised crime in Mexico and Italy is a much greater problem than in, say, the UK or Germany.