Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in. —Michael Corleone, The Godfather (1972)

Champion of this year’s Rio de Janeiro Special Group, with an environment-friendly agroindustrial-related theme sponsored in part by pesticide manufacturer BASF, the Vila Isabel escola de samba illustrates the fascinating convergence of world and underworld during the annual delirium.

iG, for example, shines a spotlight on a young Carnaval Maecenas from a venerable jogo de bicho — numbers racketeering — family, Little Wilson Alves, whose father, the legendary Moisés Alves, was tried and sentenced for racketeering in 2006.

Moisés is said to be a leader of the “nickel hunter” — one-armed bandit — gambling machines mafia.

For “is said to be” read “has been sentenced to a very long time in prison for being, and is free pending the result of appeals …”

The story as iG reports it turns on what is something…