Well, punishments and laws exist but the problem is that the SEC is so busy running down the bigger scams, they don't bother with these unless they get thousands of complaints against a company. It's probably the #1 crime you're most likely to get away with. Because technically it's operating within legal paramaters. You need to do a lot of work to prove it was a scam vs. a failed company. Since they were offering a service it makes it that much harder. But take a company like ELCR for example which never produced an electric vehicle to my knowledge. Even they would be hard pressed to get in trouble because they can probably prove they were trying to do it and just failed.
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