El Bicho: the violent mafia that helps finance the Rio de Janeiro carnival parades. The bosses of the illegal lottery dominate neighborhoods and have served since the sixties as patrons of the best schools that shine in the Sambódromo.

It all started in 1892, when Baron João Batista Viana Drummond invented a kind of lottery where each number was linked to an animal. When the bicheiros begin to amass fortunes they need to launder money and wash their image.