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I work at an internet company which provides services that criminals try to use to promote human trafficking, sell child porn, and other acts which hurt innocent people. We have entire teams dedicated to search for this activity and we report incidents to the government. If we didn't more people could get hurt. I'm also a member of an online French Horn discussion group. The moderator works only part time. We had a “teen” start posting sexual innuendos and asking for personal “lessons” from some adult. The moderator worked hard to purge the comments and block this teen's Id only to have the "teen" open a new id and go back to the same behavior. The group was at risk of being shut down by the service provider due to this activity. In desperation the moderator went to the Attorney General's office to track down this “teen.” It turned out this “Teen” was a cop trying to entice people into breaking the law. There is nothing wrong with a cop using a phony persona to monitor a group where some suspicious activities have been reported. What's wrong is for the cop to try to entice people into illegal activities. Even when the group lacks people susceptible to the enticement, the activity and rumors harms the reputation of the entire group and could deter people from participating in it.