(Newser) – Three Brooklyn men left a candy store in Coney Island last year with Jolly Rancher candies in their pockets. Two police officers who claimed to have been tipped by an undercover cop promptly handcuffed the men, saying they'd been seen selling crystal meth. A later NYPD lab test determined that their red and blue "crystalline rocks of solid material" were, in fact, candy. “To my knowledge, there is no evidence in the scientific literature that crystal meth looks like Jolly Ranchers or rock candy, other than from the Breaking Bad show," the men's lawyer tells the New York Daily News.

The men were held for 24 hours before being released on their own recognizance. The city is now paying $4,000 each to two of the men who turned out to have outstanding warrants, neither related to drugs; the third man, who was allegedly punched in the face by a cop in front of his 3-year-old daughter, gets $25,000. The settlement comes in a year that is at a record-breaking high for lawsuits involving police misconduct, which has already cost the city more than $100 million so far in 2014, reports the Gothamist. (Elsewhere, two half-brothers who were wrongfully convicted of rape and murder are free after 30 years behind bars.)

