Likely Normal

Law enforcement has mastered the art of the online honeypot—a skill that falls somewhere between “clever police work” and “leaving a plate of cookies in the middle of a bear den.” They’ve realized that if you dangle something tempting enough on the internet, criminals will come sprinting toward it like seagulls to a discarded french fry.

Take, for example, the classic “Stolen Laptop for Sale (Totally Not a Cop)” sting. Some poor detective has to list a suspiciously cheap MacBook on Craigslist with the description: “No questions asked, cash only, definitely not tracking the serial number, wink wink.” And yet, without fail, some aspiring thief takes the bait, only to show up to the meetup and find out that “Steve from the alley behind Wendy’s” is actually Officer Johnson, who’s been waiting in a Starbucks for three hours drinking terrible coffee just for this moment.

Then there’s the “Underage Chatroom” approach, where cops create profiles with usernames like “DefinitelyNotACop12” and photos that scream “I am a middle-aged man pretending to be a teen.” Yet somehow, predators still fall for it, typing things like “ASL?” to what is very clearly a detective who just misspelled “wyd” as “wud.”

But the crown jewel has to be the “Hacker Bait Server.” Police set up a deliberately vulnerable system with a name like “PleaseHackMeForBitcoin(NotATrap).com,” and within hours, cybercriminals are elbow-deep in it, completely ignoring the fact that the login page says “Welcome, FBI Surveillance Team” in Comic Sans.

The best part? These traps are often painfully obvious. A dark web forum where every other user is named “AgentSmith_DEA”? A too-good-to-be-true deal on “lightly used” police radios? A “100% Anonymous Crime Planning Chat” that requires you to sign in with your real email? Yet criminals still walk right into these digital bear traps, proving once and for all that greed and stupidity are the ultimate duo. So, if it works so well, why doesn’t the IRS try it?