The conmanвЂ™s McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly grift was recently the focus of the HBO documentary McMillions. It would be these pieces that became the key to JacobsonвЂ™s insane grift. This meant that he had immediate access to game pieces that were worth anywhere between $2,000 and $1 million. In fact, the conman found himself in charge of safekeeping all valuable pieces from printing to distribution across countless restaurants. Meanwhile, as Jacobson and his wife headed for divorce, he was hired to manage the security for the pieces to the McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly game. To win the game, customers had to find the most valuable McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly pieces that were hidden in the packaging of their meals. The game was popularly known as the McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly. He worked for a firm that handled the accounts of the Dittler Brothers, a publisher that was in charge of printing the game pieces for McDonaldвЂ™sвЂ™ $500 million sweepstakes contest. Jacobson and his wife Marsha then moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he secured a job in corporate security. In 1976, he became a police officer in Florida, but his law enforcement dreams were dashed by health problems, including a neurological disorder that left him unfit to work. The bizarre and twisted con was the focus of the 2020 HBO documentary McMillions.Д«efore he carried out the McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly scam, which was one of the biggest frauds outside of the finance industry, Jacobson was just a simple man from Ohio.

But theyвЂ™ve probably never heard of Jerome Jacobson, the man who made millions by secretly rigging the game through a national network of co-conspirators. Nearly anyone who has bought a meal at McDonaldвЂ™s knows about the fast-food companyвЂ™s popular Monopoly marketing campaign. When it comes to recounting real-life events, sometimes only drama will do.Wild About Trial/Facebook Conman Jerome Jacobson made millions from an elaborate scam using the McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly sweepstakes. Is it a federal fraud, or just canny players discovering a few tricks against McDonaldвЂ™s? The brilliance of James GrahamвЂ™s Quiz was to present the Ingrams, Chris Tarrant and the ITV executives as rounded human beings without passing judgement.ДЄ documentary without the Ingrams wouldnвЂ™t have been half as interesting. We long to know what made him tick.ДЄs with the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? scam, there were questions about whether a crime was being committed, especially by the people who bought the winning tickets.

The hole at the heart of McMillions is Jacobson himself. Burns criticised The Last Dance, ESPNвЂ™s recent documentary about the Chicago Bulls, for complicity with its main subject, Michael Jordan. The most gripping moments in Ken BurnsвЂ™ epic documentary about the Vietnam War were the interviews with the Viet Cong soldiers. We long to know what makes the fradster tickДocumentaries with difficult or ambiguous subjects work best when we see both sides.

ThereвЂ™s a reason OceanвЂ™s 11 takes the side of the robbers, and one rarely sees Robin Hood told from the SheriffвЂ™s point of view. When the victim is a multibillion-dollar hamburger corporation, it rankles. Our eyes and ears are the FBI agents and McDonaldвЂ™s employees who set about uncovering the scam.Д®xcept for the most egregious crimes, it always feels a bit iffy to find ourselves on the copsвЂ™ team. ItвЂ™s well made, but it suffers from its angle of approach. In the meantime, we have McMillions, a six-part HBO documentary that retells the story through interviews with some of the people involved and anonymous reconstructions. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are said to be working on a film. It only came to wider attention after a Daily Beast article in 2018. Jacobson was convicted on 10 September 2001, so the news was buried by other events. YouвЂ™d need a heart of stone not to laugh, and I write as someone who played McDonaldвЂ™s Monopoly a lot between 19. It was almost a perfect crime (Photo: Sky)Д«etween 19, he and his accomplices won almost every top prize in north America, including cash and sports cars, to a value of $24m. Then he would sell on the tokens for a percentage of the winnings, at first to family and friends, then later to an expanding ring of criminals. In the cubicle, he would swap the winning tokens for non-winning ones. While they waited for their flights to be called, Jacobson would excuse himself to use the bathroom and take the briefcase with him. But their work involved lots of flights within the US.

McdonaldвЂ™s monopoly scam