To be clear, this isn't an indictment against carbon offsets, it's an indictment against fraud, because your hypothetical carbon certifier is committing fraud. Carbon offsets are supposed to represent a decrease in emissions or sequestration that would not otherwise happen without that funding. A proper example would be funding someone to go around $somePoorCountry (where wood fuel is common, highly polluting, and bad for respiratory health) and replacing their wood-burning stoves with electric stoves, and then revisiting that country every few years to make sure those new electric stoves are still in use.