For two weeks in the spring of 2015, the FBI was one of the largest purveyors of child pornography on the internet.
After arresting the North Carolina administrator of The Playpen, a “dark web” child-pornography internet bulletin board, agents seized the site’s server and moved it to an FBI warehouse in Virginia.
They then initiated “Operation Pacifier,” a sting and computer-hacking operation of unparalleled scope that has thus far led to criminal charges against 186 people, including at least five in Washington state. Full Article
If only it were more widely known that this is not the only time where a government agency took over a website and made it better. Two weeks is nothing, I have heard about one site that was run for a year. Another for months before being shut down.