under these iconic golden arches they the biggest scam to ever shake the fast food giant the McDonald's Monopoly promotion offered players a taste of the American dream for years unsuspecting customers have been hoping to win big but what they didn't know was that one cunning Mastermind had been manipulating the whole thing for 12 years the game had been rigged making each player a victim the promotion was popular since its start in 1987 thanks to its marketing by the company that brought you the Happy Meal Monopoly increased McDonald's sales by over 40 percent certain menu items
provided customers with the game pieces small peel-off stickers that could then be placed on the corresponding tiles of the provided game board at the time you could even find some magazines with inserts containing the game pieces but this wasn't just any game players had the chance to win big there was a one in four chance to win small prizes is like food or drink but beyond that the stakes became very interesting winnings of cash restaurant gift cards electronics cars boats vacations and even homes but the biggest most sought after prize was that of one million
dollars all you had to do was get pieces for both boardwalk and Park Place unless you happen to come across an elusive instant winning piece simple enough right well as it turned out no in fact you were less likely to win this grand prize in McDonald's Monopoly than you were to win the actual Lottery but even with the one in 602 million chances of winning that grand prize your odds dropped to zero the moment one man entered the picture an ex-cop by the name of Jerome Jerry Jacobson he worked as head of security for the
marketing company Behind The Game and his job was to ensure the safe and secure distribution of the pieces the security of these valuable pieces were of the utmost importance to him he would even go so far as to accompany employees to the bathroom and check their shoes before they were allowed to leave from their shift but soon his loyalty to the company would end as Temptation filled his mind it all started when he discovered something Shady behind the distribution of the winning pieces it turned out that anytime the random computerized distribution system spit out a
Canadian destination the company would redistribute them somewhere within the United States effectively ensuring zero Grand Prize winners would be coming from Canada as a result the Canadian public continued to spend their money at McDonald's in hopes of securing a winning piece that they had no idea would never actually come it was at this point Jerry decided to take matters into his own hands he was going to steal the pieces for himself but first he had to crack the security system high-level game pieces worth 25 000 or more were heavily guarded each winning game piece had
some identifying imperfection as well as black light coding to make it easy to spot forgeries this meant that replicating the pieces was out of the question and security for the pieces themselves included a large vault door at the entrance of the printing area one that required two people to enter passcodes at the same time before we had a big bowl and when he had won a van there were two locks it's almost like you know back in the Cold War and you'd have two people in a missile silo and it takes two they would then
be placed amongst a number of other more common pieces before being sealed in envelopes and sent to their destinations it seemed he had no chance of getting his hands on the pieces between the printing and their distribution those seals in particular were the biggest challenge but not for long because by some miracle injuries favor a large box of these tamper-proof seals were shipped directly by mistake now he just needed a plan you see he was responsible for her delivering the pieces to their respective processing facilities Across America but he also happened to be accompanied by
a private third party auditor during these trips the only place his female travel companion couldn't follow him the bathroom he knew that's where he could make his move with a handful of fresh seals in his pocket he would tear open the envelope remove the big prize-winning pieces replace him with common game pieces and reseal the package now what that was left to do was redeem them and his plan was simple and truly unbreakable he clearly couldn't start claiming the winning prizes for himself without drawing suspicion so he was going to sell them his first lucky
recipient was his stepbrother to whom he gave a 25 000 winning piece figuring that their different last names was enough to clear Jerry of any suspicion and it worked he then began giving them to his close friends family and acquaintances in exchange for a percentage of the winnings often these people would get someone else to redeem the prize usually in cities or states far away from their home he even decided to anonymously send a million dollar winning game piece to Saint Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee three weeks before Christmas of 1995. always going
smoothly for Jerry but things were about to become a lot more complicated a chance meeting at an airport brought a man also named Jerry into his life Jerry Colombo an Italian mobster who Family Ties to the New York mafia he ran strip clubs and illegal gambling operations in South Carolina Jerry gave him the winning piece to a Dodge Viper to which Colombo actually made the Brazen choice of appearing in a McDonald's commercial where he can be seen waving the key to his illegally obtained Viper a car he actually had to turn down because it was
too small for him instead accepting the cash equipped Colombo began selling million dollar game pieces to his family and friends Colombo would take a percentage of the winnings for himself and Jerry or Uncle Jerry as he had come to be known by his Mafia connections and it was just a literally it was a monopoly of of scams but unfortunately for Uncle Jerry his new Associates would ultimately lead to his downfall Colombo and his wife got into a car accident and two weeks later in the hospital he died Uncle Cherry was left without his accomplice so
instead of giving up on the operation altogether he sought new partners leaving his Mafia Community behind Uncle Jerry had figured everything out his operations were running smoothly once again with his new accomplices until one day in 2000 when everything began collapsing because of one phone call hello this is Special Agent Rick Dent you need to look into the big winners of the McDonald's Monopoly game when you do you'll see they're all connected to each other and one man named Uncle Jerry an anonymous call to the FBI office in Jacksonville Florida but the agent didn't take
the course seriously so he made a note and stuck it on his desk to look into later it wasn't until his partner Doug Matthews noticed the note that things started rolling curious as to what McDonald's Monopoly fraud meant he started digging after more thorough research FBI discovered that all the big Winners had been lying about how they got their game pieces they also found that a number of the winners had been listing their home addresses across the United States but their annual checks were being rerouted to Jacksonville where they all actually lived and with that
the FBI launched operation Final Answer after the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire promotion McDonald's also had going at the time 25 agents were appointed to the case that would include wiretaps and surveillance they tracked 20 000 phone numbers of McDonald's employees and winners which ended up equaling 235 tapes full of recorded evidence a a name they heard often when listening in on the winners Uncle Jerry they needed to find out who this man was and how these winners had been getting their pieces after all this wasn't just some low-level fast food burglary this was
fraud with millions of dollars at play they decided to hold a meeting with the heads of McDonald's who were shocked and denied having any idea how this could have been happening the company was ready to put a halt to the annual game but before they did that the FBI convinced McDonald's to allow them to run the promotion of final time their plan and undercover operation that would lead them to Jerry once and for all they were going to wait for another million dollar winner to be announced and approach the winner under the guise of the
film crew and for this operation they actually swore in Amy Murray McDonald's VP of Global Marketing as an honorary Bureau agent for the duration of the case she dealt with all of the winners and knew how to talk to them so when Michael Hoover was named as the next winner they they went into action disguised as a film crew with a fake company they called Shamrock Productions they knocked on Michael's front door they came in with cameras and Amy asked interview style questions for Michael he was asked to visit the convenience store he claimed to
have gotten the winning piece from along with the beach he supposedly visited the same day telling the undercover agents that he would be using the money to buy a boat when the undercover agents left Michael made a phone call unaware they were listening in on every word he mentioned Uncle Jerry by name even going so far as to say things like they bought it all of it little did he know the crew had bought nothing of his full story and they had the unsuspecting perpetrators right where they wanted them the FBI had all the evidence
they needed they swooped in on Uncle Jerry's Home in a raid Where They seized all of his assets anybody with any association to the scam was arrested and in the end 50 people were convicted of male fraud and money laundering Mastermind Uncle Jerry pled guilty and was sentenced to over three years in prison he also had to pay back 12.5 million dollars in restitution and forfeiture he finished his sentence and was released in 2006 and still pays 370 every month in restitution McDonald's effectively cut their ties with Simon marketing and as a sort of apology
to their loyal and unsuspecting customers McDonald's gave away 24 million dollars across the United States to random restaurant visitors I know McDonald's was victimized but they didn't lose anything he here but it's all the people that participated in this contest and thought that it was legitimate
