Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 235. The noun phrase today is sting operation.
Okay. If somebody wants a screenshot do it right now. Let's get right to it. If someone sets up a
sting operation or sometimes just called sting by itself, usually the police or a journalist like an
investigative reporter journalist. They tried to lure or entice someone to commit a crime,
especially someone suspected of already doing that activity in order to catch them in the act
and have all the evidence. Well , the the ... the investigative reporter may just try to show
what kind of like bad or immoral behavior maybe a company or organization is doing , possibly
illegal as well. All right . Let's continue. We have a second one that does not necessarily
involve police or journalists. You could have a sting can also be used to mean a fraud or
swindle by a criminal to cheat someone out of money. So this could be a criminal stinging
somebody a target or a mark that they're trying to get money from. Let's continue. The origin of
the phrase is believed to come from the ideas of bees and honey. All right. Police or journalists
will impersonate criminals you know, to get in there or while the journalist maybe he he might
pretend to be somebody else, but he's also kind of undercover. Not letting them know who he is.
Someone making an offer of something illegal. Once they offer the money or something else desirable
and the mark of the target takes it, this is sometimes called a honey trap. Okay. At this point
they take the bait which represents the honey and the police catching you and arresting you
is the sting or if it's the investigative journalist, he will write a report on it or
or film a report on it and that's kind of the sting in that sense. That term honey trap,
I think I hear that sometimes used by spies or like the CIA or something sometimes to
get either a politician or a very important person to maybe I don't know sleep with another
beautiful spy so they can get dirt on them or get information too or they can have blackmail
material on them too. They sometimes refer to that as a honeypot as well. All right. Let's continue.
Okay. The term was popularized a lot by a 1973 movie called "The Sting. " It was very big in
its day with Paul Newman and Robert Redford who were really two top actors at that time
who play con men trying to sting a mafia boss. Well this isn't .... they're con men
but they're also trying to con a criminal guy. A little bit like the more recent movies of all
those oceans like "Ocean 10" , "Ocean 11." The same sort of things. These are these are con men
trying to con maybe a corrupt guy. So maybe you don't feel as bad.
Because they're they're they're they're cunning a crook who stole money from other people or
somehow got it illegally. Okay. But anyway we have three examples to show how we may use this.
All right. Here's the first one. Sting operations are often used by police , but in some places it
could also be considered to be entrapment, but we see this in the movies all the time.. The
police will try to buy drugs from the drug dealer and then you know once they got the evidence they
arrest them. Or you know, or or other criminal activity they may set it up to see if they can
get people to lure them you know. And again so that's the honey and the arrest is the sting.
All right. Let's look at the second one. Investigative journalist James O'Keefe , I think
he's on his website I think is Project Veritas. He often does sting operations to expose corruption
or immoral behavior by organizations. Sometimes politicians and so on.
So he also pretends or he has people working for him to pretend so that they can catch them
on film and expose them in that sense it's a sting. But of course they don't let them know
exactly who they are they're pretending to be somebody else in order to get that information.
All right. And the third one here. The police will often set up a sting operation of a female
police officer pretending to be a prostitute to catch johns. Yeah. We see this in the movies all
the time. So the woman police officer pretends she's a prostitute you know, because it's also
a crime to go with a prostitute. So the guy that goes with the prostitute is called a john.
So they can catch john's this way to make sure they don't do that as well.
So this is another technically this is another sting operation. Okay. Anyway. I hope you
got it . I hope it's clear . I hope it's very informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.