Toads

Snitches get stitches, but toads get loads of cash.

— Toad Motto

Toads are professional criminal informants who make their fortune on living the criminal life long enough to be able to rat out on someone important. They are freelance agents in Megacorpolis already "free market" justice system and work for the highest bidder. They sell the dirt on crime lords, spoil drug deals and even testify in court before vanishing again with new, surgically augmented identities.
Bad Toads have short careers with painful ends, but good ones can spin a yarn well enough to betray the same organization several times. The best toads of all are the ones who make someone else risk their lives then collect all the money.

by Johny Mnemonic

Wretched Hive of Scum & Villainy

The difference between a snitch and a toad is that of an amateur and a professional, kid.

"Toads" are people who set out to become criminals for the purpose of selling information to the law enforcement corporations for profit. This information is usually shopped around first to see which corporation will offer the most for it, but Toads have to be careful. If the law enforcement corps find the price unreasonable, they have been known to use other means to extract the information.

by Johny Mnemonic

Toads are true criminals and become deeply immersed in the lifestyle. Some are guilty of crimes worse than the people they sell out and law enforcement agents have learned that it is best not to ask questions.

The grand dream of any Toad is to rat out on someone or something so important that the payout will set them up for the rest of their lives... Or knowing the criminal underworld's propensity for brutal retaliation, their families' lives. Most never live to see such success with astoundingly high mortality rates, with an equal chance of getting shot by cop or criminal.
Most Toads are sure that won't happen to them, though. They're much smarter than those guys.

You call it betrayal, I call it enterprise.

by Johny Mnemonic

Law & Order Inc

As with everything else in the Megacorpolis, law enforcement has been made into a commercial institute.
Crime-solving is parceled out in packages and police coverage come on a subscription basis. Even in the cases when a Megacorp provides basic coverage for their part of a sector, the real work is usually done by contractors.
One or two of these "justice corporations" are large enough to be major corporations in their own right, running everything from the cops who make the arrests, to the courts that make cases and prisons that house the convicted.
It's a system without any glaringly obvious chances for abuse ever, claims corporate spokesperson.

by Johny Mnemonic

Frogs

A subset of Toads, Frogs ventures into prisons and other detention facilities to befriend criminals already caught, bilk them for information and then sell them down the river. If Toads are hated, Frogs are positively loathed as a kind of creature kicking someone while they're done.
In fact, Frogs are merely commercializing a frequent event within the prison systems with a long and "proud" history.

by Johny Mnemonic

Honor Among Thieves

There's not a whole lot of community between Toads. No one wants to let someone else steal their con and Toads are just fine with selling informants out to the criminal syndicates. Most Toads foolish enough to take on a student are bound to end up with concrete boots sometime in the future. The only exception is the Toads that specialize in other Toads; these bastards deliberately seek out Toads to cultivate as contacts before making off their their scam and leaving them to take the fall.