Rio de Janeiro—already notorious for street muggings, corrupt politicians, ruthless militias, and Kalashnikov-toting drug traffickers—has a new public enemy: plushies. Or, more specifically, the joystick-controlled claw machines that dispense them. As the AP reports, Rio police on Wednesday carried out 16 search warrants targeting the machines that elicit exhilaration among children and adults alike. But police said the claw machines defraud users who believe scoring stuffed animals to be a test of skill. In fact, they're games of chance—just like slot machines—and therefore illegal.
Officers seized claw machines, laptops, tablets, cellphones, a firearm, and—yes—furry friends. They're investigating whether organized crime may be the invisible hand behind the claw, as mobsters already run slot machines and a popular lottery. Police in Brazil's Santa Catarina state carried out an additional three search warrants Wednesday as part of the same operation. It's the second such police crackdown, following another in May during which officers apprehended 80 machines. Those machines were stocked with counterfeit plushies, and analysis of their programming found winning pulls were permitted only after a set number of attempts. Facilitating such sporadic, successful snags is an electrical current to the otherwise enfeebled claw so it holds fast to its prize. That isn't disclosed to naive users, including children liable to blow their pocket money on what's effectively a crap shoot.
Claw machines may have been feats of skill in decades past, but most modern machines have built-in programming allowing operators to predetermine their profitability, said Jeremy Hambly, a claw game aficionado from the Milwaukee area. Among Rio's claw aficionados is Alessandra Libonatti, 41, who has played for nearly three decades and noticed changes to the machines. "The current machines are crap. The claws are weaker," she told a friend in April. Local media outlet G1 dubbed the phenomenon the "weak claw scam." The nearly 13,000 stuffed animals police detained in May were donated to families who lost their homes in the massive floods of southern Rio Grande do Sul state, particularly children in shelters.
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