 What motivates people like Zeckler to commit such crimes as he committed?
I've got three million credits sitting in the Terran Consulate on Altair V, just waiting for me to walk in and pick them up. "You've committed the most heinous crime these creatures can imagine, and they're going to get you for it if it's the last thing they do. Trading brought scalpers; it was almost inevitable that where rich and unexploited trading ground was uncovered, it would first fall prey to the fast-trading boys. They spread out from Terra with the first wave of exploration—the slick, fast-talking con-men who could work new territories unfettered by the legal restrictions that soon closed down the more established planets. The first men in were the richest out, and through some curious quirk of the Terrestrial mind, they knew they could count on Terran protection, however crooked and underhand their methods. But occasionally a situation arose where the civilization and social practices of the alien victims made it unwise to tamper with them. Altair I had been recognized at once by the Trading Commission as a commercial prize of tremendous value, but early reports had warned of the danger of wildcat trading on the little, musty, jungle-like planet with its shaggy, three-eyed inhabitants—warned specifically against the confidence tactics so frequently used—but there was always somebody, Meyerhoff reflected sourly, who just didn't get the word. "If you hadn't been so greedy, you'd have found out what a chunk of land was to these natives before you started peddling it. You'd have found out that they're marsupials, and that two out of five of them get thrown out of their mother's pouch before they're old enough to survive. You'd have realized that they have to start fighting for individual rights almost as soon as they're born. And consequently, land is the key factor in their economy, not money; nothing but land. They've built up the most confusing and impossible system of barter and trade imaginable, aimed at individual survival, with land as the value behind the credit. Lying is the time-honored tradition, with their entire legal system built around it." They have only the haziest idea what truth represents, and they've shrugged off the idea as impossible and useless." Encroachment on private property is legal grounds for murder on this planet, and twelve of them descended on the same chunk of land at the same time, all armed with title-deeds."
 New interplanetary laws created more incentive to commit crimes in vulnerable areas than they offered protection from such crimes.
 New interplanetary laws created more incentive to commit crimes in vulnerable areas than they offered protection from such crimes.  Representatives from the Trading Commission set up an operation to hire and arrest con men in order to secure resources without being indicted.  The interplanetary laws made it easy for wealthy corporations and entities to prey upon those they considered less civilized and intelligent.  The Trading Commission offered monetary compensation for whoever was willing to secure unexploited trading ground on neighboring planets.