The McDonald's Monopoly Game Was Rigged for Years. One Employee Helped Bust a Crime Ring

[TheBlackAdder]

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McDonald's communications manager Amy Murray was sweating, and not just because of the weather. It was a muggy August morning in 2001, and she stood on the porch of Michael Hoover's nondescript townhome in Westerly, Rhode Island. The casino pit boss waiting inside was the latest winner of a promotional game that enticed customers to collect Monopoly "pieces" from the sides of the fast food chain's signature red boxes and in magazine inserts. Winners were promised "big time prizes!" like tropical vacations and free fries.

But Hoover hadn't found a free McFlurry. The piece he peeled out of a People was the whopping $1 million grand prize.

Only, he hadn't really won. Not fairly, anyway. Murray—there under the guise of filming a public relations video—was actually part of a top-secret FBI mission to prove Hoover's involvement in a scheme to cheat the country's second largest fast food chain, and its 69 million customers, out of the game.
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The admission led authorities to other fraudulent winners and, eventually, helped them identify former police officer Jerome Jacobson, or "Uncle Jerry," as the brains behind the nationwide scam that netted a whopping $24 million. Jacobson, a former security director of the marketing company that manufactured the McDonald's game pieces, had made sure the winning ones ended up in the hands of his friends, including a well-respected Mormon dad and a member of the infamous Colombo crime family. To protect himself, Jacobson reportedly mailed a $1 million game piece to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee, in the hopes that if he got caught, the act might ease his sentence.

https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a31134134/mcmillions-mcdonalds-monopoly-amy-murray-interview/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Remember getting sucked into playing these games when ordering there? I do.

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[Initech]

1. HBO has a really excellent docuseries on this right now.

It's called McMillions and it goes far beyond the scam and details how they got away for years before getting caught. Highly recommended!

[pat_k]

2. +1

Just finished it last week. Recommend.

[dawg day]

3. Oh, I remember..

The kids and I were so eager to get to McDonald's and get another piece.

[Wounded Bear]

4. I never bother with any of that shit...nt

[DFW]

5. A friend of mine in Iowa helped crack a lottery scheme out there

He was an assistant Attorney General fro Iowa. His name is Rob Sand:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/03/magazine/money-issue-iowa-lottery-fraud-mystery.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Lotto_fraud_scandal

He looks like a teenaged nerd (he's almost 40), but he is super smart, and just beat a long term Republican for State Auditor of Iowa, which is not a little deal in an agricultural state. I look for him to go for Grassley's seat in the US Senate, or at least for a seat in the House in the near future.