great job uncovering a scam. But the solution you provide is too extreme, and probably wouldn't work anyway. Bad guys will find ways around that anyway.
So, you shouldn't try to make it harder for new users to join. Efforts to make it easier to join should be made. As far as scams I think community will expose them when they happen.
Thank you! Yea, I don't think there is a perfect solution. I'm just thinking if someone was found scamming or breaking the law on steemit, it would be easier to bring them down for investigators if you could link seemingly unrelated accounts to the same person, even if you don't know their actual public identity. Right now there aren't a ton of scammers but if we have a wave of scammers once Steemit gets public attention, they might do actual damage to the community.