A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads them to arrest criminals and enable them to be convicted in court. A detective may work for the police or privately.
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. It "is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent".
An agent provocateur is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicates them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, the target, or a group they belong to or are perceived to belong to. They may target any group, such as a peaceful protest or demonstration, a union, a political party or a company.
A bait car, also called a decoy car, hot car, or trap car, is a vehicle used by law enforcement agencies to capture car thieves or thieves who steal items from cars. The vehicles are modified with audio/video surveillance technology, and can be remotely monitored and controlled. Those set up to catch car thieves may include GPS tracking. A "kill switch" may be installed in the vehicle allowing police to remotely disable the engine and lock all doors, preventing escape. A car set up to catch thieves who steal items from cars may be disabled so that it cannot be started and have specially prepared "bait property".
Fred the Undercover Kitty was a domestic shorthaired cat who gained attention for his undercover work with the New York Police Department and the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office in the arrest of a suspect posing as a veterinary care provider.
On May 7, 2008, Rachel Morningstar Hoffman, a 23-year-old American, was murdered by drug dealers Deneilo Bradshaw and Andrea Green after being pressured to act as a police informant in a botched drug sting by the Tallahassee Police Department. Her body was recovered two days later near Perry, Florida. Hoffman's death led to the implementation of "Rachel's Law", which imposed stricter requirements for law enforcement agencies for undercover informants operating in Florida.
DarkMarket was an English-speaking internet cybercrime forum. It was created by Renukanth Subramaniam in London, and was shut down in 2008 after FBI agent J. Keith Mularski infiltrated it using the alias Master Splyntr, leading to more than 60 arrests worldwide. Subramaniam, who used the alias JiLsi, admitted conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in February 2010.
To Catch a Predator is an American reality television series in the television news magazine program Dateline NBC featuring confrontations of host Chris Hansen, partly filmed with a hidden camera, with adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with a minor and typically being arrested as a result. The minors are adults impersonating underage persons in online chats.
On May 20, 2009, US law enforcement arrested four men in connection with a fake plot concocted by a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant to shoot down military airplanes flying out of an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, and blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale community of the Bronx using weapons supplied by the FBI. The group was led by Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani criminal who was working for the FBI to avoid deportation for having defrauded the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Hussain has never been charged in the United States with any terrorism related offenses and was paid nearly US$100,000 by the FBI for his work on this plot.
In 1985, the Fugitive Investigative Strike Team VIII, part of the United States Marshals Service, set up Puño Airlines, a front organization to lure wanted criminals into the open where they could be arrested – by sending a letter suggesting the fugitive had won a free flight, a weekend in the Bahamas, and $350 in spending money. In total, 200 fugitives were sent the offer, and 14 were arrested after showing up to claim their winnings.
Bait Car is an American television series that aired on the truTV network. The show depicted police officers targeting criminals with a high-tech bait car, rigged with hidden cameras and radio trackers. Footage is shown from in-car cameras, police car dashcams, and film crews with the police officers. The show holds a TV-14 rating due to strong language, although most of the profanity is censored.
Of the 270 Apollo 11 Moon rocks and the Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rocks that were given to the nations of the world by the Nixon Administration, approximately 180 are unaccounted for. Many of these rocks that are accounted for have been locked away in storage for decades. The location of the rocks has been tracked by researchers and hobbyists because of their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining more. Moon rocks have been subjects of theft and forgery as well.
The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks is a 2012 non-fiction book by Joe Kloc, a former contributing editor for Seed Magazine. It describes the efforts of both Joseph Gutheinz, a NASA Office of Inspector General Senior Special Agent turned college professor and his students to locate and find up to 79 missing Apollo 11 and 17 Moon rocks and plaques that the United States government gave away to 135 nations of the world, all 50 states and its territories.
Joseph Richard Gutheinz is an American attorney, college instructor, commissioner, writer, and former Army intelligence officer, Army aviator, and Federal law enforcement officer. He is known as the founder of the "Moon Rock Project" which aims to track down missing Apollo Moon rock samples.
Operation Cybersnare was a sting operation by United States Secret Service targeted at computer hackers. This was the first undercover Internet sting of its kind. Elaborate ruses were designed by law enforcement agencies to trap computer criminals. The operation lasted for 8 months.
Carding is a term of the trafficking and unauthorized use of credit cards. The stolen credit cards or credit card numbers are then used to buy prepaid gift cards to cover up the tracks. Activities also encompass exploitation of personal data, and money laundering techniques. Modern carding sites have been described as full-service commercial entities.
Operation Flagship was a sting operation jointly organized by the United States Marshals Service and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. that resulted in the arrest of 101 wanted fugitives on December 15, 1985.
The ANOM sting operation is a collaboration by law enforcement agencies from several countries, running between 2018 and 2021, that intercepted millions of messages sent through the supposedly secure smartphone-based proprietary messaging app ANOM. The ANOM service was widely used by criminals, but instead of providing secure communication, it was actually a trojan horse covertly distributed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), enabling them to monitor all communications. Through collaboration with other law enforcement agencies worldwide, the operation resulted in the arrest of over 800 suspects allegedly involved in criminal activity, in 16 countries. Among the arrested people were alleged members of Australian-based Italian mafia, Albanian organised crime, outlaw motorcycle clubs, drug syndicates and other organised crime groups.
Colcor, short for Columbus County Corruption, was an undercover criminal investigation conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into corrupt activities involving government officials in Columbus County, North Carolina. While the FBI had for several years received complaints about alleged protection rackets and election fraud, they did not begin an investigation until 1980, when one of their former informants moved to the county and reported that he was being told to pay bribes to ensure the smooth operation of his business. Their investigation centered on the activities of undercover agents posing as corrupt businessmen with connections to the Detroit Mafia.
A sex sting is a type of sting operation where a person, usually a law enforcement officer, purports to be a child or teenager on the internet in order to engage in sexually explicit activities with an adult. The evidence of the interactions between the two parties is then collected by the undercover agent and used in criminal prosecutions.
