And what if no civs show up? Can't force civs to show up to these events. Anything that hinders civs just to force rebels to show up is not fair either. People that aren't playing cop are usually playing because they don't want to be forced to do things like respond to a federal event.
Yeah and in your example, let's say a group of 10 does the mental and gets caught with 10 gold bars. That is 10 counts of federal gold bars each. This adds up to 150k per person caught, which then adds up to 1.5m total split between the cops in the processing area, providing no one manages to talk it down or get a pardon. Most of the time, you aren't talking down those charges or people do not care to.