Check out this Website of the dutch police:
http://politiepcvh42eav.onion/
Apart from busted vendors and active vendors, It even lists suspected customer usernames and cities which only means they are active on DNMarkets and collecting information pretending to be a vendor. Otherwise there is no way they can collect usernames and locations of customers just by snooping the network
They have already shown that they can use TOR by creating a police website on TOR,
Dead sure many of the new NL vendors are LE traps. If you are keen on ordering from NL just use a safe vendor whom you have worked with and has shitload of feedback on markets.
Stay safe out there guys
It wouldnt surprise me if what you suggest has been done at one time or another, and even is currently being done. but that was a pretty tiny customer list on that site, honestly. I feel like a NL vendor (even w/o feedback) could easily get that many orders in a day or two, assumig they put up some good pictures and prices were reasonable. considering the nature of the darknet, they could even put full on fake-usernames on there and nobody would know the difference. because of both those things, leads me to believe those customer names were obtained from other means (such as through arrested vendors, or through investigations of seized packages).
if you think about it, from a purely arrest-numbers-padding or deterrence-of-potential-future-customers perspective, doing what you suggest would be great. for the price of a vendor bond, you can trick countless darknet customers into voluntraily handing over their addresses and/or drop addresses. I suppose it would be a good strtegy for profiling future packages, but it's a slippery slope. imagine in court:
"so how did you conclude that Mr. John Jackson was receiving drugs in the mail"
"well, we spent $250 to obtain a vendor account on the Darknet, and then procedded to steal a ton of people's money under the guise of mailing them drugs. Mr Jackson happened to be one. we then proceeded to monitor his future mail for drug packages"
just sounds bad. I know LE knows no bounds, but no matter how you look at it this is a financially irrational and excessively roundabout way of actually taking drugs off the street. even if they could 'break even' (make enugh from pretend sales to cover cost of vendor bond) you still have to pay a salary. the cops would literally be being paid to steal from drug users in order to fund their future abilty to steal from additional drug users. drugs wouldnt ever actually be involved though.
plus its not likely bulk buyers are going to order from somebody w/o testing them first, and it's impossible to differentiate between a 'test order' for a bulk buyer and a genuine personal quantity order. couple that with the fact the LE vendor account has a pretty short shelf-life (cant vend for long if you dont intend to send anything) and the odds of them netting a press worthy arrest become pretty damn low. and expensive, at that.
basically, lke most humans LE is lazy as fuck, I suspect once they start doing this they will do it A LOT. since that hasnt happened yet, I believe that for some reason or another, they have held off on doing so (probably legal/procedural/public relations reasons). but who knows. maybe anyone who got 'scammed' by a newbie NL vendor lately is gonna get a knock on the door