[Nextgrid]

Scammers need to reach the victim somehow. How they do this currently is either robocalls (call every single potential number in a loop), social media or advertising.

If every disconnected number leads to a police-run honeypot that would play along (easy with the carriers' cooperation), police running bait social media accounts to get scammers to approach them, and proactively crawling scam-prone keywords for any scam ads to follow up on, the scammers will likely all get arrested before they'd even reach a single real victim.

Most importantly, the mere fact this is happening would have a deterrent effect and effectively put a stop to such scam operations because even ignoring the risk of arrest, it's simply not profitable if the majority of your scam attempts go to law enforcement who simply wastes your time.