THOUGHT you were in with a chance of winning big? Think again!

The McDonald’s Monopoly promotion scam in the 90s was so effective that it is believed not a single genuine customer won one of the $1million jackpots. Instead it was all being syphoned to friends and associates by Uncle Jerry, AKA Jerome P. Jacobson, an employee of the marketing company bought in to help run the promotion.

So who were the biggest losers?

It is often thought that McDonald’s, whose promotion involved tokens based on Monopoly being handed out with every purchase offering prizes ranging from a cheeseburger to vast sums of cash,  were the victims here. And let’s face it – someone nicking $24million, or £19million, from you is never ideal.

But when you consider this competition has boosted annual sales at the chain – who have an estimated annual revenue of around £17billion – by five per cent, or close to £1bn, you’d think they’d just get over it.

So the biggest losers to the perfect scam were of course the punters who were absolutely 100 per cent guaranteed to not win a penny of the top prizes. And it was of course those very same punters across the world that flooded McDonald’s with the extra cash.

So how did the scam work?

Jacobson, an ex-cop, became involved with the Monopoly game when he relocated with his then-wife, Marsha, to Atlanta. She landed a job as a security auditor and helped him secure a position at Dittler Brothers, one of her clients that printed the McDonald’s game pieces. Afterwards, he transitioned to Simon Marketing, a company based in the same region responsible for producing the game pieces.

Jacobson who oversaw the printing of the winning pieces, safeguarded them in a vault, sealed them up, and concealed them in his vest before flying from one McDonald’s factory to another to hide them in the fast food chain’s packaging.

Before long, he began surreptitiously passing on the prize-winning Monopoly game pieces to acquaintances, occasionally for personal gain. Among those who received the pieces were his step-brother, a local butcher who purchased a stolen piece worth £8,000 for £1,600 and his nephew, who obtained a piece worth £160,000 in exchange for £38,000.

Initially, Jaccobson shared the game pieces with his acquaintances, but later he decided to sell them to Gennaro ‘Jerry’ Colombo from the Colombo crime family, whom he had met coincidentally at the Atlanta airport. Colombo then enlisted individuals to pose as legitimate winners of the game in return for 50 per cent of the prize money.

As time went on the fraud scheme expanded beyond his immediate circle which complicated the task of identifying them during the FBI’s investigation.

So how did they get caught?

In March 2000, the FBI received an anonymous phone tip alleging that an individual named ‘Uncle Jerry’ was manipulating the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion by stealing game pieces from within the company and then selling them.

Special Agent Richard Dent, who was stationed at the FBI’s Jacksonville office, reached out to a McDonald’s spokesperson, Amy Murray, to initiate a process of verifying the contest winners. One of the winners, who claimed a $1million prize and happened to be Colombo’s father-in-law, purported to reside in New Hampshire, but property records in Jacksonville showed otherwise. Similarly, Gloria Brown, another winner, was receiving her annual payments at a Jacksonville address.

Dent spearheaded an investigation that involved 25 agents across the country. In 2001, he received a breakthrough when he plotted the addresses of three winners, all of whom were living in proximity to Jacobson’s residence at a lake house in South Carolina.

Losers!

We have all been scammed and (almost) everyone was a loser here. But spare a thought for our Canadian brothers and sisters, who apparently weren’t even in the running after a directive from head office and it was this same directive that Jerome Jacobson felt gave him an out if he ever get caught doing the scam.

McDonald’s used a computer programme to randomly pick which restaurant the winning pieces would go to. One year, the million dollar prize was selected to go to a restaurant in Canada, but head office didn’t want any winners in Canada so they requested the selection be re-run.

Jerry thought he could most likely use this information to blackmail them if he ever did get caught. Unfortunately it didn’t help him in the end and when he was finally rumbled he was ordered to repay £10million.

He was also sent to prison for three years… without a get out of jail free card.

Want to know more about the whole scam then check out the video below.