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 suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect'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
• police arranging someone under 21 to ask from an adult to buy alcoholic beverage for him or her; the adult is prosecuted if he or she complies (May 2004, Indio, California [1])

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

A related term is agent provocateur.

A related matter is parking a car as a honey trap for car thieves, etc.

In computing, a honeypot can be used to gain information about a potential cracker.

See also

• Call girl
• Operation Pin
• Abscam