Dark true story of how a crime gang swindled millions playing McDonald’s Monopoly

Most of us Brits can’t wait for McDonald’s Monopoly to return every year, but across the ocean it’s a different story.

As the game comes to a close in Britain this week, we look back at the biggest McDonald’s scam ever pulled off, which left one man £3million richer – and jailed.

3

3

3

Civil wars

Legendary TV writer and podcast host Karen Kilgariff revealed all about the Uncle Jerry scandal and how he swindled more than £20 million from the game on the podcast: My favorite murder.

She says it all started with what was called the “Burger Wars” in the 1980s, when fast-food chains like Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s competed for customers by bashing each other in TV ads.

“In the end, McDonald’s won the civil wars because other companies, which were slightly smaller and were actually trying to take on the giant, spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising and marketing, and McDonald’s went up 40%,” she claimed.

Other companies’ free advertising sent customers heading straight to their stores to see who really had the better burger – and bosses decided they needed a plan to keep them coming back.

In collaboration with Simon Marketing, they invented the Happy Meal in 1979, after which Simons came up with a new strategy in 1987: McDonald’s Monopoly.

We all know the premise of the game in Britain: buy medium or large meals and collect stickers with Monopoly board pieces.

Some stickers offer ready-made prizes like chips or a burger, but if you collect all the streets of the same color you can win cars and thousands in cash – an incentive that will keep people coming back to play and eat more meals buy.

Prizes used to go up to £753,810.00 ($1 million) and you could go in and ask for the stickers for free as it was illegal to turn away customers because the game would be considered gambling.

Naturally, the stickers with the big prizes are the hardest to find, so people keep coming back and sales increase by 40%.

Fast forward to 2001, where Florida FBI agent Doug Matthews and his partner receive an anonymous tip that the game is fixed as three of the $1 million jackpot prizes were won by the same family – the only reason they hadn’t been caught was because they had different surnames.

Keep it in the family

Jerome P. Jacobson, also known as Uncle Jerry, and a former cop, was the mastermind behind the scheme when the FBI discovered that every major prize winner had a family connection to him – the possibility of which was impossible without some dirty work being done .

Rob Holmes, head of security at McDonald’s, is called to a meeting with the FBI as they explain the situation and is left stunned and shocked as the company was making preparations. next Monopoly game.

Instead of calling it off, they devise a plan to catch the scammer red-handed with the help of security at McDonald’s.

The next big winner of the game is a man named Michel Hoover, Uncle Jerry’s local butcher. The police decide to go undercover film a ‘commercial’ for McDonald’s and follow the winner and how he won.

McDonald’s Monopoly 2024

Everything you need to know…

He revealed that he got the ticket in a magazine because it also contained some McDonald’s stickers to win, and he planned to spend his earnings on buying a boat.

Hoover was unaware that police were listening in and could hear his conversation about Uncle Jerry – the same name in the anonymous tip.

Even more damning for Hoover, the FBI heard him boast about the fact that the “film crew” believed everything he said about finding the winning ticket – but this was just the tip of the iceberg.

They find a recurring phone number in each winner’s phone records and discover that it corresponds to Jerome P. Jacobson – the head of security at Simon Marketing – the company that puts together the Monopoly game for McDonald’s.

Jerome’s role was to watch the printing of the winning pieces and ensure they were hidden in the McDonald’s packaging.

Jacobson ensured that all winning prizes were won by his friends and family members, to whom he charged a percentage of their winnings in advance.

Eventually, his plan grew to include the addition of middlemen who would sell the winning pieces.

How he did it

Jerome and other inspectors charged with ensuring the safety of the winning pieces were sometimes instructed to deliver the winning tickets in sealed suitcases directly to the drinking cup and chip holder factories.

But Jerome soon discovered he could rig the game to his advantage after accidentally receiving a pack of stamps directly – meaning he could open the stickers to see the winning tickets and then reseal them so he could she could switch.

While traveling with auditors to hand out the winning tickets, he went to the bathroom stalls and took them out to replace them with regular non-winning stickers.

Since winning the tickets themselves would be too obvious, he and his family found people willing to pay thousands to secure the winning tickets for themselves.

Jerome gave a game piece worth $200,000 to his butcher (Hoover) in exchange for $45,000 in cash. In 1998, Jacobson would involve his cousin in the scheme with the same offer (a $200,000 game piece for $45,000 up front).

He even anonymously sent a $1 million game piece to the donation officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.

Caught red-handed

Once the police were tipped off, it was game over for Jerome, who was under constant surveillance along with the recent suspected winners.

But police had difficulty identifying Jerome as the gang’s leader, so they asked McDonald’s to put a pause on paying out the most recent winning lottery tickets.

This led to many of them frantically calling Jerome, whose phone was tapped by police, giving them the evidence they needed to have him and several accomplices arrested in August 2001.

Ultimately, more than 50 people were arrested for mail fraud and Jerome was sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to pay $12 million in restitution.

It is thought he stole $24 million worth of winning stickers from McDonald’s, netting himself $3 million over the twelve years of his scheme.

Now the Monopoly game is no longer played in the US, but can still be found in Canada, Ireland and Great Britain.

“McDonald’s wants to give our customers a chance to win every dollar stolen by this criminal gang,” then-McDonald’s CEO Jack Greenberg said in a statement at the time.