McDonald’s Monopoly scam: mobsters, drug dealers and a security guard stole winning game pieces worth millions

Did you ever play the McDonald’s Monopoly game? If so, you will not want to miss this episode.

An online article this week revealed the details behind a massive scam: one man stole almost all the winning McDonald’s monopoly game pieces—worth a total of $24 million—and spread them around through his network of friends and associates, receiving a kickback for each stolen game piece. The scam ran from 1989 to 2001.

Hi everyone, this is Jeff and you are listening to Plain English for Thursday, August 9, 2018. I couldn’t believe it when one of my coworkers told me about this story—it seemed too crazy to be true, but believe me it is true. You’re going to like this episode, I think.

Today’s phrase is “at random,” so listen for that phrase and I’ll explain it a bit more later on in the episode.

This is episode 75, so you can find the transcripts online at PlainEnglish.com/75. Nice and easy to remember. We have a lot of new listeners, so I want to just remind you that all transcripts have interactive translations of the hardest words and phrases from English to Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese. All at PlainEnglish.com/75. Let’s get started on today’s main topic, shall we?

McDonald’s Monopoly game scam

Have you ever played the McDonald’s Monopoly game? For years, it was the iconic company’s most successful promotion. Millions of us—and yes, I include myself in that—peeled the game tickets from our French fries, burgers, and hash browns, hoping to collect a combination of Monopoly game tickets that would win us a huge cash prize—or at least a free milkshake.

A lot of people did not play this Monopoly game—but they won hundreds of thousands, or even a million dollars, anyway. That’s because for over ten years, one man scammed McDonald’s out of almost all the winning Monopoly game tickets. Instead of going to customers at the Golden Arches, the winning tickets were spread among a loose network of this one man’s friends and family. He often demanded a share of the winnings in return, but sometimes gave them away for free to people he thought needed the money.

His name was Jerome Jacobson, and he lived in Jacksonville, Florida. He worked as the director of security for the company that printed the Monopoly game pieces for McDonald’s. As the security boss at the printing company, he insisted that all his employees be searched and inspected; discipline was tight and Jacobson himself was often trailed by a female auditor to guard against wrongdoing.

As soon as the winning tickets were printed, they were sealed in a special envelope and were to be delivered to McDonald’s locations around the United States, selected at random by a computer. Jacobson himself would deliver the pieces to the restaurants. When he traveled, he hid the winning tickets in a secret compartment in his vest. But the envelopes he delivered included common, everyday game pieces because he figured out a way to open and re-seal the envelopes undetected—he did it in the bathroom at the airport, the only place the female auditor wouldn’t see him.

Like so many criminal schemes, it started with just one infraction. He gave away a winning piece worth $25,000 to his brother-in-law, just to see if he could do it. When it worked, and he didn’t get caught, he was emboldened. But he knew that he’d get caught if his close friends and family members near his town all started winning tickets that were supposed to be spread around the whole country. So he started recruiting associates who could find people at random—in their loose network of contacts—all over the country to claim the prizes, and then pay him, Jerry Jacobson, a kickback, a portion of their winnings. He often demanded the kickback in cash up front, before he delivered the ticket.

As you can imagine, some of the people he used to recruit so-called “winners” were some unsavory characters. One was a mob boss; another was a big-time cocaine dealer with a criminal past. There was a fortune teller involved. But others were just normal people, happy to participate in the scam. A lot of them couldn’t believe it was possible. After ten years, a lot of people knew about the scam.

One of those people—we don’t know who—called McDonald’s and gave an anonymous tip saying that one of the recent $1 million winners was not authentic. A McDonald’s executive started looking into this so-called winner’s story. He said he found the winning ticket near his home in New Hampshire, but public records all said this man actually lived in South Carolina.

That’s when the FBI got involved. They were able to trace two more winners—three in all—to a small area in South Carolina, coincidentally where Jerome Jacobson then had a house. The police kept tracking the winners and connecting the dots in the scheme, patiently, under cover, without revealing their investigation. In one dysfunctional family, a woman agreed to split the winnings with her family members, but ran away with the money on her own. They had a meltdown fight in the Indianapolis airport, which the FBI secretly observed and caught on tape.

Eventually, McDonald’s and the FBI knew the winners were all a scam. But the FBI needed one more fake winner in order to bring the whole thing down; they needed rock-solid proof. So McDonald’s, which at this point knew the game was being defrauded, launched its biggest-ever contest—and the FBI caught the perpetrators in the act. The FBI, acting as McDonald’s employees, told the fake winners they were going to be on a television commercial, and showed up at their homes with a camera crew to film the commercial. The big winner, a man named Michael Hoover, sat before the cameras and made up a rambling story full of false details about how he found the winning ticket, unaware that the whole camera crew were federal police waiting to arrest him.

All this happened between 1989 and 2001, and the big arrest came on September 10, 2001. It was big news and the CEO of McDonald’s apologized to the public for the violation of their trust. But the story was quickly forgotten because the next day were the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. A big article on the Daily Beast web site this week uncovered government reports and reported all the details on the scheme for the first time. There are now plans for a movie based on this article; Ben Affleck will be the director and Matt Damon will play the FBI agent who investigated the scam. John Travolta will play a mobster involved in the scheme and Lady Gaga will play his wife.

The trials came in the years that followed the arrest. In total, over $24 million was stolen. Fifty people were convicted of mail fraud. Some of the fake winners got probation and are paying back their winnings: $50 a month. Can you imagine you thought you won a million dollars, you probably spent a lot of it, and now you need to pay it back, $50 at a time? On second thought, I don’t feel bad for them.

The recruiters—the people who found the fake winners all around the country—got a year in prison and steep fines. Jerome Jacobson—or “Uncle Jerry” as he was called by his associates—the mastermind got 37 months in jail. As the writer of the Daily Beast article drily noted, he did not pass go.

That last line was pretty funny—“do not pass go” is a line from the Monopoly cards. If you have some time and want to read this article in English, I’ll paste the link in the show notes and on the transcript at PlainEnglish.com/75. It’s a really good article—it’s long—but again, I think you can understand most of it.

How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions

I’d like to say hi and thank you to some listeners today. First up, Petra from Germany, is listening to improve her public speaking skills, which she uses at work. And then Angie from Mexico also wrote this week. Angie is in school in Xalapa and she is a synchronized swimmer. That’s incredible—synchronized swimming has always seemed really hard to me. That’s essentially a mixture of swimming, dance and gymnastics all in the water. That’s pretty cool. So thanks for listening Angie and Petra.

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