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

I've learned to leave hackers and scammers alone; no matter how much they piss me off.

Most of them are quite capable of delivering a nasty counterattack. Some, IRL.

Had a friend hack a spammer that hijacked his server, and they blasted his server into LEO.

definitely this..you are messing with a group of folks, and potentially stopping their flow of money. unless you have great opsec, you may just cause problems for yourself you dont want. personally never heard of it escalating beyond online attacks, but it's not worth the drama imho