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Comment by RyanCavanaugh

It's the same question as why people keep so many valuables in houses where you can just break a window, walk in, and take stuff: because you go to jail if you do that.

If ACH was different and you could just, say, walk up to an ATM and punch in a routing/account number and withdraw cash, it'd be a very different situation. You can only interact with the ACH system through a regular bank, and regular banks have KYC regulations that mean the recipient of those funds has a name, address, and SSN. Doing theft via ACH means the funds end up in account clearly tied to your identity, and you go to jail.

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