IT was the popular game of chance that saw McDonald’s customers winning big cash prizes.
But when a complex criminal network got involved, the fraudsters were "lovin' it", too.
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For 12 years until 2001, the burger chain’s Monopoly promotion was infiltrated by real-life hamburglars who stole nearly $25million.
Now the astonishing story has been snapped up for the big screen by actors and screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and has also been turned into a six-part HBO series for new channel Sky Documentaries.
Produced by Hollywood A-lister Mark Wahlberg, McMillions, which starts tomorrow night, features interviews with McDonald’s staff and rookie FBI Special Agent Doug Mathews, who was determined to "burn down the criminal enterprise".
Mark, 48, says: "It was one of those things where it just sounds so far-fetched and unreal. It’s an amazing story.
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"The cast of characters is absolutely fascinating.
"There’s so much humor in these episodes, but there’s also a lot of heartbreak.
"You know, innocent people or people who didn’t think they were really committing any serious crimes."
Between 1989 and 2001, a mysterious man then known as "Uncle Jerry" orchestrated the McScam, which ultimately involved more than 50 friends and family defrauding the burger chain of nearly $25million.
The Monopoly game involved customers receiving two colored stickers when they bought food.
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The stickers mimicked properties from the board game and matching sets netted a prize, from free fries to holidays and cash up to $1million.
"Uncle Jerry" was thought to be former cop Jerome Jacobson, who was head of security at Simon Marketing, the Atlanta, Georgia, firm that produced the monopoly pieces for McDonald’s.
His job involved overseeing the printing and transportation of the stickers.
To his staff, Jacobson was meticulous, even checking their shoes at the end of a shift to make sure none of the game stickers had gone walkabout, intentionally or not.
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But in 1989 he stole a roughly $25,000 prize token and gave it to his stepbrother. The pair split the winnings.
That easy windfall gave Jacobson a thirst for more.
At first he gave the winning stickers to friends and family in return for a share of the prize.
Then, in 1995, at the same time that McDonald’s introduced bigger cash prizes — including a million-dollar jackpot — Jacobson ramped up his operation.
That year, the supplier of the tamper-proof seals used to transport packets of winning stickers to McDonald’s packaging centers around the US accidentally sent a batch directly to Jacobson.
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Unable to resist the opportunity, he started to steal winning tickets and use his own seals to secure the packages again.
He sold one ticket worth $201,951 to his butcher for $44,330 and another of the same value to his nephew.
He also enlisted strip club owner and mob boss Gennaro Colombo — who may also have been Uncle Jerry — to recruit other fake winners, including struggling single mum Gloria Brown.
She hit the headlines aged 39 in 1997 when she scooped the million-dollar jackpot — supposedly after buying a Happy Meal, large fries and a Coke.
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Beaming for the cameras, she told reporters: "Hopefully my son and I can live the kind of life I dreamed of."
In fact, Gloria had mortgaged her home to buy the ticket from Colombo for $39,405, and agreed to pay a further $50,487 every year.
Colombo also cashed in his own winning ticket, netting a sports car and then even appearing in a McDonald’s video to promote the game.
He died in a road accident in 1998, but Jacobson carried on the scam with the help of a cocaine trafficker, a Mormon businessman and Colombo’s wife Robin.
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He even anonymously posted a winning $1million game piece to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.
One source close to Jacobson later said he had sent the mystery donation in the hopes of getting a more lenient sentence if he was ever caught.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s customers were being denied the chance of winning the big prizes.
James Lee Hernandez, who co-directed the documentary series, said: "Everyone thought you never had a chance to win the McDonald’s Monopoly game, but you never really knew why."
In March 2000, the FBI received an anonymous tip-off that three of the $1million winners were related.
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Agent Doug Mathews spotted the message scrawled on a Post-It note on a colleague’s computer and was immediately intrigued.
Soon Operation Final Answer was launched — which was chosen ahead of jokey suggestions "Operation Fallen Arches" and "Operation Unhappy Meal".
The FBI tracked winners, tapped phones and even lured a suspect into a hoax promotional video, with Doug Mathews posing as the director.
In all, they discovered a complex network of 53 friends and family — and at the centre of it all was Jacobson.
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Agent Mathews said: "Between 1989 and 2001 there were no legitimate winners of the high-value game pieces in the McDonald’s Monopoly game. I mean how crazy, bulls*** is that?"
Director James said: "If this had happened for a shorter amount of time, nobody would have ever found out.
"Greed is always what ends up taking people down in a situation such as this.
"If they’d kept it controllable, Uncle Jerry would have got away with it."
The fact the story is not widely known comes down in part to the timing.
The trial started in Jacksonville, Florida, on September 10, 2001. The next day was 9/11.
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James said: "The FBI rightfully just shifted gears and something like the McDonald’s Monopoly game doesn’t seem so bad any more.
"That’s a big reason why people don’t even know about it, because the news completely focuses for the next year or more on 9/11."
In 2012, while scrolling through discussions on social media site Reddit, James found a post that read: "Today I learned nobody really won the McDonald’s monopoly game".
It was enough to start him digging.
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He found a local newspaper article but it took another three years and a Freedom of Information request to find the FBI agents and federal prosecutors involved in the case.
James, who worked at McDonald’s as a teenager, said: "When I spoke to them, they said it was one of their favorite cases, but nobody had ever got in touch with them about it."
Jacobson was sentenced to 37 months in prison and had $12.3million of his possessions confiscated.
Another 51 people were also convicted of the US charge of "mail fraud".
These included Robin Colombo and Gloria Brown, who was given probation and ordered to pay back $51 a month.
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James said: "People have asked us if this is a victimless crime, as McDonald’s is a billion-dollar company.
"A really critical thing we wanted to highlight in McMillions was all the people who participated in this had to deal with the ramifications of it — it affects them even to this day. People lost their jobs because of one person’s greed.
"Everyone wanted to win that game, so if somebody came to you with the opportunity to claim a prize and all you had to do was say you are the one who peeled that game piece, it’s likely that you would have done it."
- McMillions will be airing from 9pm Wednesday on Sky Documentaries and is available on NOW TV.
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