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★ — Net worth (published estimate)
Event date · —
Posted · · Arrests
Poster · @jeremybtc (Jeremy)
Synopsis
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.
