I am not a lawyer (or am I?), but I bet this rests on the technical details. LE can allow a drug ring to distribute drugs, they just can't distribute real drugs to people. If the buyers ODed and died, it would be a huge liability for LE. But if buyers OD and die on drugs that dealers supply -- that LE allowed those dealers to supply, but that they would have supplied anyway if LE hadn't infiltrated the group -- then they have no liability for it. So did they take over a forum and allow other people to trade CP, or did they supply CP to the forum that didn't exist there before? It's not clear to me. But the latter would be on a par with providing people with drugs. If it's the former, then it's in line with the other types of investigations that they do.