Sting operation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In law enforcement a sting operation is an operation designed to catch a person committing a crime, by means of deception. 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 criminal's actions to gather evidence of the criminal's wrongdoing.

Examples:

• purchasing drugs to catch a supplier
• posing as a client to catch a prostitute or pimp / escort agency
• posing as a prostitute to catch a client
• posing as someone who likes child pornography to catch a supplier
• posing as a supplier of child pornography to lure a pedophile
• posing as a child in a chat room to lure a pedophile

Law-enforcement may have to be careful not to provoke the crime. In common law jurisdictions, the defendant may invoke the defense of entrapment.

See also Call girl, Operation Pin.

The original article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_operation.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.