Actually, because they have been commiting academic fraud in order to get US taxpayer money they deserve a fair trial and then a very long imprisonment for the very real criminal complaint of actual fraud.
I agree. The federal monies they received were through US granting agencies. To get those monies, they had to write grant proposals. Those grant proposals went through several levels of peer-review. The reviewers are scientific peers until the final level. For their proposals to get such approval, there had to be fraud involved on their part. And, the conditions of federal grants explicitely state that grant fraud is subject to both civil and criminal prosecution under federal law.
Any citizen can report grant fraud by going to the Office of the Inspector General for the granting agency. There is a form for the report and one can file it online, last I knew.
We all know that federal prosecution depends on who is in the DoJ at the time that the crime is discovered.
So, that may be a pipedream, considering the lack of prosecution (or outright dismissal) of certain recent cases.
If the scientific community shuns these persons, their ability to commit additional fraud will be severely limited, at least.
ETA: Or, if enough citizens file reports at the respective OIGs, there may come a point where prosecution cannot be ignored. Hmmm.