The McMillion Dollar Hustle

What do cows, shrimp, and hiccups have in common? Absolutely nothing -- except they kickoff this wild story about how one man rigged McDonald's Monopoly and walked away with millions!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I what's having to Know it Alls? Welcome to another episode.
If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, And I'm
your host, b Dot. Make sure you're following us on Instagram.
I DK myde with an underscore before it, and at
the end, we need to get those numbers up and
we want to be able to engage back and forth
with the Know It Alls, So make sure you hit

(00:21):
us up. Man. Now, I have a confession. I went
to go see that new movie by Ryan Coogler and
Michael B. Jordans Senters. First of all, I just want
to say it's a twenty out of ten amazing movie.
It's basically a black version of From Dusk to don
if you ever saw that, literally the exact same premise,
but it's dated in the Jim Crow South Mississippi in
the nineteen twenties, and it gives so much perspective to

(00:44):
that time period. But my confession is a couple episodes back,
I did a full episode on stand up comedy and
where Comedians came from, and I talked about the grios. Now,
one person hit me up on Instagram and said, Dot,
you stupid as hell. That's not how you pronounced that
I'm watching the movie Centers and they have a whole
scene where they're talking about the West African greats.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I felt so small in that theater. I said it's greats, and.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
I did a whole episode calling them grios. Listen when
I do things like that in the future, please help
our brother out.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Even though we know it alls.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I don't know it all, and clearly I didn't know
how to pronounce griots. I dk myde with an underscore
in the front and at the back so that you
can correct me when I'm out here sound in the
dumb as hell I digress. To kick off today's episode,
I have three of the most useless facts you'll never need,
not a day in life. Three facts that won't change

(01:41):
your life, but might win you a barbershop debate.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Up.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
First, the longest hiccup attack ever lasted sixty eight years. Yeah,
a man named Charles Osbourne started hiccupping in nineteen twenty
two and didn't stop hiccupping until nineteen ninety, sixty eight years.
That was three seconds and about drove me crazy. Your

(02:05):
second useless fact cows have best friends, Yeah, and they
get stressed when they separated. So next, time you drive
by a pastor, Just no, Bessie might be out there
venting about her man to her homegirl. And your third
and final useless fact, a shrimp's heart is in its head. Yeah,
not only are shrimps the scavengers of the sea, they

(02:27):
apparently think with their heart. The seafood boy just got
a little bit more emotional, didn't it. Those have been
your three useless facts for today's episode. The longest hiccup
attack ever lasted sixty eight years. Cows have best friends,
and a shrimp's heart is in its head, and our
head is our brain. And now that your brain is
full of facts that you didn't ask for, let's talk

(02:48):
about how McDonald's monopoly was one big law.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I didn't know. No, I didn't know. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I didn't know. I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
I didn't know. Okay, Tom Machine. It's the late nineteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
McDonald's is trying to cook up something big to bring
folks into the restaurants, so they partner with a company
called Simon Marketing to run a promotional game that would
change fast food forever.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Monopoly.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
You remember it, Huh? You buy a large fry, you
peel the sticker and boom lordwalk park Place. You might
even win a free medium fries. But the goal was clear.
Collect the right properties, win big prizes, cars, cruises, cash up.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
To one million dollars.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
But what if I told you the game was a lie,
not for everybody, but for regular folks like you and me.
Enter Jerome Jacobson aka Uncle Jerry. He was the head
of security as Simon Marketing, and his job was to
protect the rare high dollar Monopoly pieces like they were
golden bars. And for a while he did that, but

(04:07):
then greed pulled up to the drive through. By the
early nineties, Jerome realized something. If he controlled the winning pieces,
he controlled the winners. So whether old Romi rom Do
started stealing the big money game pieces, not just once
or twice, he was moving them like product. One million
dollar winners, new cars, vacations to Disney World, all getting

(04:28):
passed out to people he hand picked. But he didn't
want to get caught, so he got slick. He didn't
claim the prizes himself. Instead, he built a whole network
of fake winners, friends, mobsters, in laws, even a drug.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Dealer or two.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
They'd win, collect the prize money and then kick jeromea
back in sometimes half. This went on for over a
decade from nineteen eighty nine to two thousand and one.
Not one legit million dollar winner. So if you was
out there looking for boardwalk, family was already in Uncle
Jerry's back pocket. It all came crashing down because of
an anonymous tip in two thousand some Hayden snitches. That's

(05:06):
when the FBI got involved. They launched an investigation called
Operation Final Answer. Like the game show shout out to
Regis Fielding. They wired tapped phones, followed the winners and
started putting the pieces together literally, and by two thousand
and one they had enough. Eight people were arrested in
one day. Jerome Jacobson caught. He eventually played guilty and

(05:30):
got thirty seven months in prison, like three years and
some change. So the next time you had McDonald's thinking
back on how you just needed park place to hit
the jackpot.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
No, fam Uncle jeredt.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Already gave that to his cousin down in South Carolina.
But for real, this story is more than fast food fraud.
It's about how systems we trust can be manipulated behind
the scenes. How a dude in a suit with the
keys to the Kingdom, used a kid's game to build
a million dollar hustle because I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Maybe you didn't either. I didn't no no do

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Mhm.