Jeremy@Jeremybtc
For 12 years, every major winner of McDonald's Monopoly was a fraud. The game was rigged by the one man hired to prevent rigging.
> McDonald's Monopoly launched in 1987.
> Peel a game piece off your fries or drink. Match the right properties. Win up to $1 million.
> The promotion was massive. Tens of MILLIONS of game boards distributed in magazines alone.
> McDonald's poured massive marketing behind it.
> By law, McDonald's couldn't run its own contest.
> A third party company called Simon Marketing handled the game pieces.
> The man in charge of security at Simon Marketing was Jerome P. Jacobson.
> Former cop. Everyone called him Uncle Jerry.
> His job was to make sure nobody stole the winning pieces.
> He stole the winning pieces.
> Starting in 1989, Jacobson figured out how to swap the high value game pieces during transit.
> He would duck into an airport bathroom stall, break the tamper proof seal on the case, pocket the winners, and reseal it.
> He got away with it because a supplier accidentally sent him a sheet of the tamper proof seals directly.
> That mistake gave him 12 years.
> At first he gave the pieces to friends and family. His step brother. His nephew. People he trusted.
> Then it grew.
> Jacobson started selling winning pieces to strangers for a cut of the prize.
> His network eventually included mobsters, strip club owners and a members of the Colombo crime family.
> One family connected to Jacobson's network claimed three separate $1 million prizes plus a Dodge Viper.
> Jacobson apparently even anonymously mailed a $1 million winning piece to St. Jude Children's Hospital.
> McDonald's honoured it and paid out the full amount over 20 years.
> The total stolen was over $24 MILLION in cash and prizes across 12 years.
> In 2000, the FBI got an anonymous tip about a man called "Uncle Jerry" rigging the contest.
> They looked at the winner list. Almost every major winner lived within 25 miles of Jacobson's house.
> The FBI convinced McDonald's to run the contest one more time. Wiretapped Jacobson's phone.
> Intercepted the name of the next $1 million winner before he even claimed it.
> Then they posed as a McDonald's film crew and interviewed the fake winner on camera. Let him tell his entire made up story about how he found the piece.
> Three weeks later, Jacobson was arrested in an early morning raid.
> The trial began September 10, 2001. The next day was 9/11.
> One of the biggest corporate fraud cases in fast food history got buried under the biggest news story of the century.
> Over 50 people convicted. Jacobson got 37 months. He was the only one who served more than a year.
> Every time you peeled a game piece off your fries and lost, the fix was already in.
The winning pieces were in Uncle Jerry's pocket before the food hit the tray.
