What took regulators so long to shut these creeps down?

The scam shut down by regulators on Tuesday has been known of for years.

State regulators have been fining the Cancer Fund of America and its offshoots for one violation after another since 1989.

Then in 2013, an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, the Center for Investigative Journalism and CNN outlined the alleged fraud in exhaustive detail.

“If you didn’t know better, you’d think someone was just making up the most deplorable fraud you could imagine,” said Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring, who said his office had been investigating the sham charities since 2010.

If federal and state regulators acted sooner, some of the $187 million given to the fraudsters could have gone to legitimate cancer research.