Rio de Janeiro police said officers dressed as characters from the television series “Money Heist” and as Jason Voorhees from the “Friday the 13th” horror franchise to blend into Carnival crowds and catch people stealing cellphones.
Police said Carnival officially kicked off on Friday in Rio, and the officers focused on areas where revelers worry about keeping their phones safe amid frequent theft.
In Santa Teresa, police said the undercover agents noticed a woman snatching a cellphone from someone’s hand. The civil police said the officers followed the woman, watched as she handed the device to an accomplice, and then arrested both suspects.
Police said the officers found five cellphones in the pair’s possession after the arrests.
The civil police said the operation was part of a broader approach in which officers wear costumes to evade thieves’ expectations during major festivities. Police pointed to earlier examples, including officers dressed as “Ghostbusters” characters in downtown Sao Paulo who, according to police, caught a woman with 12 cellphones stolen last Sunday.
Police also said officers dressed in alien outfits in another previous operation caught a man with three phones hidden under his clothing.
Cellphone thefts are common enough in Brazil that even as overall theft rates have fallen, fear remains high around both violent robberies and more discreet thefts, the AP report said. It cited a 2025 annual report by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety think tank that said cellphone thefts dropped from about 980,000 per year in 2022 to about 850,000 in 2024.
The AP report also said opinion polls consistently show that violence and crime remain among Brazilians’ main concerns.