I honestly thought there was some sort of conspiracy going on.  I figured there were bribed reviewers, or some sneaky arrangements between Unsplash and Shutterstock itself.
 
Nope.  It's just that it's absurdly easy to do.

A bot can be set up to download the images, and upload them to shutterstock.   Suggested keywords are automatically added, and a five or more word title generated from the detected subject matter.   It's not even a lot of work to do it by hand.

When you download an image from Unsplash, the image title contains the name of the person who uploaded it to unsplash, and the word unsplash, for example:

joshua-earle-l6juNKOlzvs-unsplash.jpg

Even with the obvious file titles, and nonsensical keywords, the images are accepted.

I present to you, the easy peasy portfolio of Thiefy McThieferson!  (done by hand, no bot)

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Thiefy+McThieferson

I will of course, be taking this down before anything has a chance to sell, but I thought the results of this little experiment should be shown. 

This was a fun day. 

To be brutally honest, whoever is an idiot enough to upload to Unsplash should be aware that there's a high risk that someone will upload their copyright for sale

Hi,
Thank you for sharing this "simulation". In other words SS doesnt care if someone is a thief as long as they get their share of sale. Implement best practices against piracy? it is not mandatory by law and it costs money.

They will only act if these guys are discovered by someone. It's a jungle business where no government actually review or rule company practices. They dont care about contributors. they only care about customers.

We all have responsibilities...we need to take ownership for our actions, as do Unsplash idiots.

If one consumes fast-food everyday and develop health-problems, it's too easy to blame the fast-food restaurants when we have more than enough information out there to make educated decisions based on due diligence. Generally, we're living in a victim society where we constantly try to shift the blame to others.

Same with Unsplash contributors, but frankly don't think the vast majority of them care because they don't know...but if they did know I'm sure they would care. Unsplash contributors aren't completely to blame, of course the agencies should have more robust processes to avoid unauthorized licensing, which shouldn't be so challenging as noted by the OP.

Don't walk out at night alone in dangerous neighborhoods - simple. If one does, carry pepper-spray

The POINT being, if Shutterstock gave a * about this, all they would have to do is tell their system to reject anything with "unsplash" in the file title.

BlackBox is giving free footage on youtube too... ready to steal and reupload. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCICWnim8HieqmKC9ajL0nEw/videos

Thiefy has had a couple of rejections.  A small percentage of the uploads.

Two for "noise/grain", which is true of those images.

One for Intellectual property, which is appropriate for that image. 

Three for "Previously Submitted Content: This image has already been submitted to Shutterstock."    This is interesting.

One is in this portfolio: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/WireStock+Inc

One is in these portfolios: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/srujan+kumar   and https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Yogendra+kumar+6699

The third does not seem to actually appear on Shutterstock.  None of these are the owners of the images.

Anyone want to take bets on what happens if I submit images with watermarks on them?

I just disabled the portfolio, I was starting to get sales. (what?)

Apparently, you can't just close a Shutterstock account, so I had to send a message to support to ask for it to be closed.  I explained the reason thoroughly.

I just disabled the portfolio, I was starting to get sales. (what?)

Apparently, you can't just close a Shutterstock account, so I had to send a message to support to ask for it to be closed.  I explained the reason thoroughly.

Nice. Shouldn't you report to a copyright Authority or Unsplash itself that Shutterstock actually sells fake "licensed" content?

I'm surprised and pretty shocked that you could set up a Thiefy McThieferson site.
Even ignoring the giveaway name, don't they check IDs of new potential contributors?

I wondered that too, because say someone wacks a mole, stolen image account, then all that thief has to do is open a new account and start over? I had to provide an ID and I know the IRS and national security laws, require anyone making a payment to verify the identity.

2002 Homeland Security Act.

I also put the country as India, even though the mailing address is in the US.

I imagine China or Russia would work as well. 

I didn't say I thought it was the fault of some country or other.  I am sure that Shutterstock is aware of the differences in copyright laws in other countries, and that for some places, they face no risk of legal fallout.   I blame Shutterstock, not the other countries, for Shutterstock's taking advantage of the differences.

If you think you can report them to somebody who will do something, do so.