The way in which Luigi was arrested is part of their safety checks. A way to motivate working class to turn people in, without paying them. I generally thought reward money worked.

I learned it did not work from a podcast that no longer exists. Michael Bazzel’s OSINT podcast talked about it within the context of people who used OSINT to find people on wanted lists and how reward money collection actually works. (Podcast doesn’t exist any more, the copies of the casts went away with the podcast.). Sadly, there’s no replacement for this type of news and info condensed down into one place. It’s also a niche area of information, not followed by many.

Those McDonald's workers were not paid for turning Luigi in. But they thought they would be.

Even so, look at the bigger picture. How many Luigi’s have there been since 1981?

Most people avoid confrontation, spending most of their days sitting in a chair or lying down, and thinking/hoping/wishing a white knight is going to rescue them from their situation. It’s one reason why so many people exist in bad relationships (1 or a chain of them). Because they think that other person is going to rescue them from their sad days of avoiding confrontation while sitting in a chair or lying down, most of the day for most of their days. Hoping. But never doing. Thinking about doing. Maybe spouting off on the internet about doing. But never doing.