Persecution, Entrapment, or Perfectly Legal Activity?

An attorney partners with a private investigator to monitor a high crime neighborhood for break-ins. The PI documents with video a break-in and informs the victim, who will testify to the missing items. The PI follows the prepetrator home and reports the address to the attorney; he also gets video of the items being carried into the home of the alleged perpetrator.
The victim hires the attorney to sue the alleged perpetrator for return of the items and damages and costs; no police report is filed and no arrest is made. No criminal charges are pursued.
The attorney files the case in court.
Does the arrangement between the attorney and PI consitiute persecution or entrapment of the alleged perpetrator, or is it perfectly legal to get business/clients this way?

The relationship between the PI and the attorney would constitute a conflict of interest that would bar the attorney from representing the victim. Additionally, the attorney could likely be called as a witness and therefore could not represent the victim under model code of professional conduct 3.7. Not ethical, but not entrapment as that term presupposes that the entrapping party is law enforcement.

It may be ethical but it is just plain weird. If I saw someone breaking into something I would call the police, If I knew where or who was the person doing the robbery I would call the police.

And that's why we hate lawyers!

'Entrapment is when Law Enforcement, or someone working with Law Enforcement, entices someone to commit a crime they would otherwise NOT commit. In your scenario, the PI OBSERVES someone committing a crime they would have committed even if the PI had done nothing. Therefore, it CAN'T be entrapment.

Persecution isn't a crime. Entrapment is a defense to a crime and applies only to police activity. In other words, not applicable here. Your hypo is not likely to happen, either. You are not likely to collect judgments against criminals who break into peoples' homes, so there is absolutely no incentive for a lawyer to do this.

I'm no attorney, but, wouldn't suing someone, or rather SUCCESSFULLY suing someone require that a court be willing to make a ruling on the case which is adverse to the defendant? Granted settlement would be the best defense here and only a fool would defend this recorded crime all the way to court, but that wouldn't be the case if the likelihood of a judgement in favor of the plaintiff wasn't so high.

Notwithstanding the above, lets assume the case DID go before a judge (because again, without examining this scenario all the way through, an out-of-court settlement wouldn't make so much sense), wouldn't a judge have to view the video tape, and therefore be witness to a crime and have no choice but to press criminal charges, even in addition to the civil proceeding for which the case was originally brought?

I guess what I'm saying is, you can't put what is essentially a criminal case in front of a civil court and expect to win unless you've shown some sort of fault by the defendant (unless you're Nicole Brown Simpson's family and you and everyone else knows you have it coming, and good), and by showing the fault (given the specifics above) wouldn't that be cause for (or at least the option for) criminal charges to be filed by the judge, even if no citizen had pressed charges?

As far as "persecution", the term implies subjugation, ostracization or incarceration because of a belief or idea, or for some discriminatory reason such as race, sex, age, etc. I don't think this would qualify as persecution since the criminal would but rightly, and justly deserving of whatever persecution (up to and including prosection -wink-) the law allows for damaging personal property and theft.

OVERALL PERSONAL VIBE:
This does remind me of the old "hey, I saw the car accident you were just in, I saw the whole thing, you're innocent, I know a great attorney, here's his card".

PROS:
In a Libertarian sensibility, it does keep criminals out of jail (i.e. I'm not paying for their room and board so they can work out and get stronger and meaner in jail), and it leaves them squarly responsible for repaying those who's property they steal or damage... at least in theory...

CONS:
How many home invasion criminals do you come across with the financial and legal wherewithal to even entertain a lawsuit? The reason they get arrested instead of sued is because they don't have anything to lose. Here's what I mean...

WHY IT WON'T WORK, WHY YOU WON'T GET "clients":
1. The criminals "home" is actually his uncle's. He sleeps there about half the time, the other half at his girlfriends house and he doesn't pay rent at either place.
2. The criminal takes everything he steals, hawks it for cash immediately, and smokes it as either heroine or crack cocaine so getting back victims stuff is quite impossible cuz he's not saying where he moved the merchandise, and he's not going to tell either, because he's got nothing to give you in a lawsuit, so there's no fear. He owns a few changes of clothes, and an old Ford Pinto his grandmother gave him when she lost her license, but little else.
3. He is 38 years old, and hasn't worked since he was 22. He's forgotten his social security number, lost all his teeth, and as soon as he received any lawsuit paperwork, he'd just leave the state and send and your new client on an unsuccessful, expensive wild goose chase.

CONCLUSION:
I like the concept, but it has some flaws that make it an unsound business model, you can't take money from those who have none. In a perfect world, you and your PI friend could run your business a little differently... in this perfect world, every law abiding citizen in that neighborhood would have the right to carry a concealed weapon (hello Montana), and see how many criminals have the guts to break into homes with the knowledge that most everyone is or could be packing. Instead of suing the broke, you could be defending home owners and law abiding citizens in their justifiable homicide cases and you'll sleep like a baby at night! Not to mention your clients will be thinning the crime committing herd, and reducing prison population everytime they splatter some crackhead's brains out. God Bless the America our Founding Fathers intended. May we one day return to self reliance.