USPS text scammers duped his wife, so he hacked their operation

I hate that it kicks off with "DISCLAIMER: This is not my work. I would never and don't condone illegal hacking of scammers"

You know what? I do. We all should. These scammers are awful people and deserve to be attacked. I am tired of toothless authorities like CISA and the alphabet agencies in the US doing next to nothing about it unless some YouTube scam baiter does the work for them. Scammers destroy people, not just financially, but emotionally as well, even driving some victims to suicide. As far as I am concerned, any wannabe hacker out there should be using these scammers for target practice.

vigilantism can spiral out of control. While it makes sense in this scenario, it's because the scammer is obviously breaking some law and is criminal. What happens if it wasn't so obvious?

If society doesn't want vigilantes than it must take an active role in pursuing and punishing criminals.

Society does take an active role through police, fbi, etc etc

Vigilantes are criminals too so society takes an active role in pursuing and punishing them as well.

That only works if you aren't in a:

Anarcho-tyranny

A stage of governmental dysfunction in which the state is anarchically hopeless at coping with large matters but ruthlessly tyrannical in the enforcement of small ones

https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64594123

Then you get your door kicked in for not paying taxes on $50 venmo transaction, or saying the wrong thing online but when there is a school shooter (or presidential assassin) the cops wait for them to finish while they play with their phones.

While it is true that the justice system is often used to disproportionately hurt the poor, nobody is getting their door kicked in for not paying taxes on a venmo transaction.

Civil forfeiture is roughly similar.

Civil asset forfeiture is indeed horrible and often used to basically just steal from the poor. It is also totally different than having your door kicked down for failing to pay taxes or being arrested for saying the wrong thing online.