Inside the lives of people writing essays for US students

This is too naive.
Even if the original authors don’t break the rules directly, their intent is to do it.
Ignoring something like that justifies all kind of wrongdoing by clever people who found a loophole in the rules.

On the other hand, I also don’t feel like a ban would have the desired effects as at most it would just drive them to the shadows, since you cannot punish them if you don’t know who they are.

What is the difference between someone writing the whole thing or pointing how to fix the mistakes?
The result will be the same composition, but in the latter case it was the student who “wrote” it.