Sting operation

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NCIS preparations for an MDMA sting

In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime. A typical sting will have a law-enforcement officer or cooperative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's wrongdoing.
Sting operations are common in many countries including the United States, but not allowed in other countries such as Sweden.^[1]

Contents

• 1 Examples
• 2 Ethical and legal concerns
• 3 Sting operations in popular culture
• 4 See also
• 5 Notes

Examples

• Deploying a bait car (also called a honey trap) to catch an auto thief
• Setting up a seemingly vulnerable honeypot computer to lure and gain information about hackers
• Arranging someone under the legal drinking age to ask an adult to buy an alcoholic beverage or tobacco products for them ^[2]
• Posing as someone who is seeking illegal drugs, contraband or child pornography to catch a supplier; or as a supplier to catch a customer
• Passing off explosives, fake or real, to a would-be terror bomber
• Posing as a child in a chat room to identify a potential child molester
• An undercover officer posing as a potential customer to raid illegal prostitution
• An undercover officer posing as a prostitute to raid illegal solicitation
• An undercover officer posing as a hitman to prevent potential murder-for-hire
• An undercover officer posing as a spectator in order to infiltrate and take down an illegal dog fighting ring.

Ethical and legal concerns

Sting operations are fraught with ethical concerns over whether they constitute entrapment. Law-enforcement may have to be careful not to provoke the commission of a crime by someone who would not otherwise have done so. Additionally, in the process of such operations, the police often engage in the same crimes, such as buying or selling contraband, soliciting prostitutes, etc. In common law jurisdictions, the defendant may invoke the defense of entrapment.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, however, entrapment does not prohibit undercover police officers from posing as criminals or denying that they are police.^[3] Entrapment is typically only a defense if a suspect is pressured into committing a crime they would probably not have committed otherwise, though the legal definition of this pressure varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For example, if undercover officers coerced a potential suspect into manufacturing illegal drugs to sell them, then the accused could use entrapment as a defense. However, if a suspect is already manufacturing drugs and police pose as buyers to catch him, then entrapment usually has not occurred.

Sting operations in popular culture

The term "sting" was popularized by the 1973 Robert Redford and Paul Newman movie The Sting, although the film is not about a police operation: it features two grifters and their attempts to con a mob boss out of a large sum of money.

• In 1998, three agencies joined forces to conduct a sting operation where they successfully recovered the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock from a vault in Miami. The sting operation was known as "Operation Lunar Eclipse" and the participating agencies were NASA Office of Inspector General, the United States Postal Inspection Service and U.S. Customs. The moon rock was offered to the undercover agents for 5 million dollars.^[4][5]

• In To Catch a Predator, an NBC reality TV show hosted by Chris Hansen, decoys posing as minors have online conversations with potential sexual predators in an attempt to lure them to a meeting, where they are confronted by Hansen and the police.

• In White Collar (TV series), a fictional renowned thief, known as Neal Caffrey, is caught and serves as a criminal consultant for the FBI. Neal during these cases resumes a false identity to lure forgers and other thieves out of hiding such that the FBI can arrest and charge them.

• In the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, the website Littlelacysurprisepageant.com situated in the in-game internet was taken over by the in-game police, the LCPD, to catch "sexual deviants" that are attempting to view child pornography.

See also

• Advance-fee fraud
• Fence (criminal)
• Handling
• Informant
• Rachel Hoffman
• The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks

Notes

1. NJA 2007 s. 1037.
2. "Palm Springs, Coachella Valley - Weather, News, Sports: Special Report: Local police crack down on adults buying booze for minors". kesq.com.
3. "What Is Entrapment?". Slate.
4. Joseph Richard Gutheinz (November 2004). "In Search of the Goodwill Moon Rocks: A Personal Account". geotimes.org.
5. Christina Reed (September 2002). "Moon rocks for sale!". geotimes.org.

Categories:

• Deception
• Criminal law
• Law enforcement techniques