It illustrates the difficulties/risks faced by the insiders who are actually 'doing the dirty work', know what is going on, and want to stop it and/or blow the whistle. When the state is also part of the scam, being a whistleblower is very tough.
I am still amazed that the libor rate - something that was so 'easy' to manipulate - was the basis for many billions of dollars worth of derivatives. The 'foundations' of so many systems that our society runs on turn out to be shaky and easy to rig - not just IT systems.
Where there's money to be made or lost on the value of anything that's determined subjectively, pressure will always be brought to bear to move the needle one way or the other.