Pather smuggling fleets pose as Independents, down to you losing rep with actual independents if you attack them, so they're easy to miss. Pathers also don't field large fleets/ships outside of their remote bases, as they don't raid places like pirates do. Their MO is shaking down weak fleets for tithes and smuggling support to their cells to perform terror attacks planetside, in space pathers don't really do much of anything.