If LE is posing as vendor, are they allowed to sell & ship real drugs?

I searched around and couldn't find anything on this. In what jurisdictions would it be legal for law enforcement to pose as a vendor on DNMs and actually ship real product? I assume, if it is legal, this could be used as a method to build up information about mid-level dealers.


Comments


[46 Points] Seraphim_X:

Yes. Sting operations involve real drugs all the time. Sometimes these operations span over months, even years.


[25 Points] None:

[deleted]


[19 Points] at69:

Ever hear the rumors about the CIA and the war on drugs?


[7 Points] trynakick:

If you look at the list of DNM arrests on gwern.net, this doesn't really seem to happen. LE always wants to move up, vending would be moving down.

Federal agencies really don't care about local mid-level dealers, so they could track you, but then they would work with local agencies for a bust of an ounce of MDMA and a seizure of 20k in cash. It just doesn't make any sense logically from their stand point (I know, the whole war on drugs doesn't make sense to us, but they have a different worldview.)

Besides, before you could even start doing reseller-level quantities, you'd have to build a reputation, etc.

Or a caught vendor could flip. Right now I actually could see this happening with a huge fent bust, keep it quiet for a week or two, find some regional suppliers and raid them all at the same time. But in this instance I can't imagine them sending real fent. This would be a purely PR move, and as soon as people realized they let drugs get sent when they could have stopped them, that's a problem.

Many on this sub are paranoid as fuck, as one should be, and will point out that it definitely can happen. I agree, but I think the incentives and opportunities have to line up just right in order for LE to go through the hassle.


[3 Points] None:

[deleted]


[2 Points] DooshNozzzle:

I would be VERY surprised if any vendor who has lots of sales turned out to be LE.

Think about it they can't guarantee that the pack isn't going to, say, a kid.


[1 Points] gh0stpanther:

Playpen


[1 Points] jaks9000:

I read a bust recently where they removed the drugs and put some bullshit powder instead. Wouldn't count on it, but if you receive and it's obviously a very shitty fake I'd clean house as a precaution.


[1 Points] None:

It's called a "controlled sale" as apposed to a "controlled buy"


[1 Points] CDRCRDS:

Yes. Especially when they trading to sell guns and ammo.


[1 Points] IGotRichTooFast:

There would be problems with this.

  1. You'd have to establish a good feedback. That could take a year or more to get trusted enough for the busts to be worth it. This would not look very well to the general public if they found out LE was putting drugs on the street just to build some trust to bust people that are "worth it" to them.

  2. Anyone buying bulk enough to make a bust worth it, isn't going to be stupid. To build a case, you'd have to have a record of the same address and the same person getting the packages. A smart bulk buyer disposes accounts after a buy, has a different drop each time, and with a different name. A case could never be built against 75%+ bulk buyers. There would be some stupid ones that get caught but most are smarter than that.

There are the 2 biggest humps to get over and I doubt they'd find a way around them.