Comment by ryandrake

The visceral desire for retribution is half of the problem here. Companies respond to incentives. The problem isn't generally the price. When they get caught the cost is generally more than the benefit they received.

The problem is that they often don't get caught, or find a way to weasel out of it. As a result the managers who do it will be rewarded most of the time, and even when they're on the wrong side of the gamble, half the time they'll already have left for another company. Raising the penalty wouldn't deter that.

What you need is a remedy that can address the offense. Order them to publish the source code to the system for 10 years, so that anyone can audit or modify it in case they try something similar again. Not only does it make it harder for them to reoffend, it's the kind of penalty that corporate lawyers hate, and then they'll be more likely to insist on policies to prevent that from happening to begin with, which puts pressure on preventing the problem from a different angle.