November 2, 2025 • 58 mins
In 2001, an anonymous tipster called a local Florida FBI office alledging that the popular McDonald's Monopoly promotion had been rigged. The tip was taken with a grain of salt until a brilliant but sometimess overzealous young FBI agent started digging. What he discovered would shock Ronald McDonald out of his red shoes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
For over three hundred and fifty years, the state of
South Carolina has been the setting for some of the
most horrendous crimes ever committed. Some have gained global notoriety,
some have been forgotten, and others have been swept under
the rug completely. Now, two South Carolina natives and true
(00:26):
crime enthusiasts have teamed up to examine these heinous acts
in detail, giving their perspective of the evil that has
resided in the Palmetto State. You're listening to Carolina Crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And welcome back to Carolina Crimes, episode two forty six.
I'm one of your hosts, Matt Hyres, along.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
With Danielle Myers, and boy well, he got.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
A good one for you today. It's gonna be a
multi parter, So strap in, this is going to be
a wild ride. I promise this has been one I've
been waiting for. But before we get started, I just
want to tell you thank you, Danielle for putting together
that collection of stories last week. Get everybody in the
Halloween spirit, jo gotten your spook on and your scary stuff,
(01:18):
got your trick or treating, sitting back popping some candy,
listening to some Carolina Crimes We appreciate you, but thank
you for all the feedback and everybody that chimed in about, Hey,
I've heard this legend. I've heard about the story some
of the things that you shared last week about the scoopy,
spooky graveyards, the headless horsemen of Camden, the bride bride
(01:42):
of Camden that stowed away the couple or the thropple
out and Paully's Island, wild stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And sleeping preachers and yeah, that.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Was that was bizarre. I went down the rabbit hole
on that this week. That's a really interesting and cool
story for sure. But thank you so much. Go ahead
and do some housekeeping before we get rolling into this one.
Like I said, this is going to be a couple
different parts because there are a lot of moving pieces
in this one, a lot of game pieces in this one.
(02:15):
So folks, if you're not already following us on social media,
check us out at Carolina Crimes Podcast over on Facebook,
also over on Twitter at sc Crimes pod. And also
if you're listening on Apple iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, those
five star review I think on the Apple mediums you're
able to leave us a little review that helps the
(02:36):
algorithm go up. Please let us know what you like
about the show. Tell us your pets, names, what you
had for supper, anything like that. We certainly appreciate it.
We're gonna have a lot of thank yous at the
end of this episode and we finally get there. Also,
if you're looking for some cold weather gear, it's chilly
now here in South Carolina. Gets you some hoodies. My
(02:57):
daughter and her friends just got a couple. Made them pay,
but they had to order it from Carolina crimesstore dot com.
And you can do so as well and get some
of that Carolina Crimes paraphernalia. Well, Danielle, we've kind of
discussed this one already, and usually at the beginning of
(03:19):
all of our podcasts we talk about the setting, a
little bit of background information from each from each episode,
and I guess the best setting for this one would
be a South Carolina landmark. We're going to talk about
a couple of American institutions and good people gone rogue,
and then subjectively if they were good people and just
(03:43):
how rogue they went. But we're going to start off
talking about lake Hartwell, lake Hartwell, it's a fifty six
thousand acre lake or a Reservoir as it's designated, and
it's situated right in the upstate on the border of
South Carolina and Georgia. Now Lake Hartwell it was created,
(04:09):
is man made lake created in nineteen sixty three by
the damming of the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers. Now it
was dammed as part of the Flood Control Act of
nineteen fifty and the Heartwell dam itself costs sixty eight
point four million dollars and took eight years to build
(04:32):
a lot of the low lying land that ended up
being flooded. You hear stories about Lake Lanier in Georgia,
it was formed about the same way, But Lake Lanier
has a lot of its own ghost stories that goes
along with it flooded towns and graveyards. But the area
right here where Lake Hartwell sat was home to hunting
(04:54):
ground to Cherokee Native American tribe, several other tribe around
that area, and that area was flooded out to create
this massive, massive lake. Now the lake itself, Lake Hartwood,
was named for revolutionary war hero Nancy Hart, a female
(05:16):
oh Okay. Now, she seemed like a tough as nails
backwoods woman. Wasn't taking anything off of anybody, and it's
told there's a lot of tons of folklore about her
what she did. But there were six Tory soldiers that
came and wanted to force her to make make them
(05:37):
something to eat. Cook for us, lady, make us a sandwich.
She said, okay. She was an unwavering patriot and said, okay,
you know, come back, it'll be ready about this time.
Come get your bellies full, and waiting on the other
side of the door. When they got there was her
in several firearms, and she let Lusa hale a gun
(06:00):
fire and permanently compromised six Tory soldiers.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So that's that's exactly who Lake Heartwell is named for.
And a great honorable namesake. I like it. Yeah, name
for a female as well. Now, the average depth of
Lake Hartwell is forty five feet, but there are portions
that reach one hundred and eighty five feet deep when
(06:30):
it is at full pond, And by full pond I
mean has different levels. Of course. They whoever controls the
heart Will Dam can control the level of the lake.
They can let some water out, they can prevent water
from getting out. If you're in drought times, several serious
droughts over the last twenty five years have occurred up there.
(06:50):
You know, you've got docks, floating docks laying on the ground.
I've seen several pictures of those. So they really have
to be on top of where the water levels are
are in Lake Heart will and depend greatly upon the
rain and run off from the mountains. Yeah, certainly. Well.
To start this week's episode, of course, we've covered Lake Heartwool.
(07:12):
We're gonna talk about in this episode. Two American institutions.
One a Parker Brothers board game. The first year is
in existence. It wasn't a Parker Brothers game, but they
did purchase it. Probably my favorite board game of all.
(07:35):
I don't think it is my first one I ever played.
I played some Shoots and Lighters, High Ho the Dario
or something with the spinning wheel and little apples and.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Or cherry high Ho cherio.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and kind of an attempt to Twister. I mean,
as an only child, it was kind of hard to
play Twister yourself, Yeah, and kind of weird to get
your mom and dad to play with you. That was
that was weird. But the game I'm talking about, and
we're going to focus on is the game of monopoly.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I love Monopoly, and I think that it very much.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Test families. Yeah, it tests relationships.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
You're wherewithal It tests your I guess, intuition, your graciousness.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Gotten too many of fights with my older sister she
was ruthless.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, it can make you ruthless. It wasn't designed to
be that way. Originally the game was designed to kind
of warn about greed, but it has evolved through the
years to kind of promote greedy if you're looking to
win the game, if you're hotting under a rock. You
don't know what monopoly is. It's a square board game
(08:53):
where you go again around the perimeter. You buy properties,
you charge rents. You can build houses and hotels in
order to order to charge more rents. Basically a game
about economic decisions and what you want to make of that.
The object is to bankrupt the other players. That's how
(09:16):
you end up winning. And over three hundred million copies
of this board game have been sold throughout the years.
I still have one I got for Christmas. I think
I might have been seven when I got it. It
was a fiftieth anniversary edition. It's really wild. It's got
(09:40):
like little gold game pieces. It's weird, but I mean
we've still got it top of my top of my hallroom,
hallway closet. There's several variations that have come up through
the years. I think there's a mobile game you can
play now. Yeah, several different quick versions. Because the looking
(10:05):
on the old Google machine can you could say it
says it takes two to five minutes to set up
and can take three hundred and sixty five hours.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh my gosh, it's not a short game.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
No, it can be. Really, it could be short. It
could be a couple of hours, or it could be day.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Three to five business day.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, and I engaged in one of those. It's one
I'll never never forget. I think I was around ten.
We went with some of my dad's family to Edistoe
Beach and played with some uncles and cousins, and I
was by far and away the youngest person. So with
the older crowd, there's a lot of them Miller lights involved,
(10:51):
and that game just stayed set up and went on
and on. I really don't think we ever finished it.
And people have a variation of rules, you know, with
your free parking and everything. But Monopoly, for the most part,
what you need to remember for this story is it's
a game board with different properties. They're matched up by color,
(11:12):
so that when you get all of one certain color,
then you can build or win prizes depending on the variation.
And talk about that. The second American institution we're going
to talk about might be one of the most American
(11:33):
institutions there is worldwide, well known, right up there with Walmart, Nike,
some of the other most well known brands. And I'm
talking about probably the quintessential American restaurant. And we're talking
about McDonald's.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I think I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, McDonald's, of course, founded in May of nineteen forty
by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. If you've ever seen
the movie The Founder with Michael Keaton, he plays Ray Kroc,
who basically I don't want to say who do the
McDonald brothers, but let's just say Ray Croc came away
(12:19):
owning franchises of McDonald's and it got to the point
where the McDonald brothers could not even use their own
last name for a restaurant. And the popularity and widespread
epidemic of McDonald's it went worldwide. It's skyrocketed under ray
Croc one of, if not the most recognizable worldwide brand,
(12:44):
and today it has almost forty two thousand locations, Wow, worldwide.
So incredible. Now, how did the two of these fit together?
And what's le heart we'll got to do with it? Well,
we're gonna talk about that right now, and we're gonna
(13:06):
go back. We're gonna go back to the year two
thousand and one, okay to start off with, and we're
gonna go to the Jacksonville, Florida office of the FBI. Now, Jacksonville.
Everything I've read about this, there's been documentaries, there's been
(13:28):
podcasts on this topic, but this Jacksonville FBI office has
always been described as the work they do is are
very important, But it wasn't the glitz and glamour. It's
you wouldn't see a TV show made about the Jacksonville
FBI office. A lot of what they had to deal
(13:50):
with there was insurance fraud, things that were not a
not your sexy crime, you're not chasing down you know,
millions of dollars of cocaine on speedboat or anything like that.
They were situated right between Atlanta and Miami, so kind
of everything in between really fell to this office. Well,
(14:16):
a call came in to this Jacksonville FBI branch and
it was an anonymous caller and they said, we need
to let you know that the McDonald's monopoly promotion is rigged.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Okay, what.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And there were a couple agents. There was a senior agent,
Rick Dent, a young agent named Doug Matthews who is
an absolute character. We'll talk about him throughout this throughout
this episode. And their squad director Christopher Graham. You know,
this kind of wasn't afterthought, okay. An anonymous caller called
(15:04):
in said the monopoly monopoly game at McDonald's was rigged.
So it was a promotion and uh, nobody really paid
attention to it, and maybe it's.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
A person that's mad because they couldn't no matter how
much they bought, they couldn't get the last piece that
they needed to win that prize, you know. And said
they're like, is this a disgruntled player.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Maybe or you'll see go on. But Doug Matthews, young agent,
he was like, well, I'll follow up on this call,
this anonymous tip, and he called this person back and
they said, okay, so what we're looking at why we
(15:49):
called is there's three separate winners. You can win up
to a million dollars. You can win boats, you can
win smaller cash prize like twenty five thousand dollars. You
can win as little as like a free small fry,
free yeah, bacon, egg and cheese biscuit or something like that.
(16:10):
But these big money winners, they're three of them, and
they're all related. Now they don't have the same last name,
but through marriage and you know this winter his sister
in law's brother in law one, and you start connecting
(16:32):
these dots, but all three are loosely related.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
They're not strangers.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah, and this just doesn't add up. They all lived
in this northern Florida area, real close to each other.
And the only real item of information they gave they said,
there's somebody involved that goes by the name of uncle Jerry.
(16:59):
So he's like, Okay, this is kind of weird. You know,
maybe we need to look into this. And if you're
not familiar with what we're talking about here when we
say McDonald's monopoly, here's how the game works. McDonald's issues
a game board, or you can get the game board
(17:20):
online if you want to print it out, or back
in those days, it would come in some magazines. The
promotion started in nineteen eighty seven. Oh yeah, we had
the game board magneted or stuck on our refrigerator. Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I remember it growing up, but I guess I didn't
realize that it was before.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah. Yeah, you tape, you tape your little pieces on there.
You're like, oh, we need Pennsylvania Avenue or Yeah. There's
some instant winners, and there were several ways that you
got these pieces, but what you were the object with
the mcdonald'sman, what you're trying to do is get all
the pieces together that match that certain color, and you
(18:05):
win that prize assigned to whatever it is. I mean
some you know, I think the purple ones, which are
the lower rent properties on the monopoly board, you get
fifty bucks something something similar to that. But the main prize,
one of the most sought afters, were, of course, the
two Blues. You got Boardwalk in park Place. I think
(18:27):
Boardwalk was out there, but I think you were always
looking for park Place or vice versa. But I always
remember you're kind of looking for There was.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Never anybody who could find two.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yes, yes, and our who knows what I mean. I'm
sure our board was thrown away after the promotion was over.
But that's what it did and how you played. How
you got these pieces from McDonald's. You would get them
off of different food items. If you got a big mat,
there was one or two little tabs on there that
you pull off your food. You could pull them off
(18:59):
drink cupski boxes, yeah, the large French fry boxes, not
the small paperwes. Back then maybe a McDLT. You'd get those,
but they were stuck on there and you had to
peel them off and you saw what piece you got. Now,
McDonald's they had a marketing company because McDonald's they they're
(19:23):
in the food business and if you watch that movie
the founder, they are in the essentially in the real
estate business is what they're doing. But they're more worried
about selling food. They don't know anything really about marketing.
So they farmed this thing out to marketing companies. And
(19:44):
this particular marketing company that ran this promotion was called
Simon Marketing Incorporated. Simon Marketing was actually credited with coming
up with the happy meal concept. Oh so that's wild,
they said, Okay, And people were like, well, children don't
(20:06):
have money, they're not walking in here. And they were like, well,
you put a toy inside, cut down the portions, and
every time they come by McDonald's, they're going to scream
and squall at their parents to pull into McDonald's and
buy a happy meal. So these folks were brilliant. Well,
they came up with this promotional game, the Monopoly game.
(20:27):
Of course, the game pieces we talked about how to
get those. You could also get game pieces. At one
point you could ask a cashier for a free game
piece and they have to hand you one, no purchase necessary,
So there was kind of a loophole there, so it
wasn't gambling. Also, there were ads promoting the Monopoly promotion
(20:50):
and magazines such as People Magazine, Newsweek, things like that,
where you could had two pieces in there. Some of
those Sunday parade papers, do you remember those that game
in the Sunday paper, A little glossy got a weekly
magazine thing. Some would come in there. But the Monopoly game,
(21:11):
every time McDonald's rolled that out, it would result in
a forty percent increase in revenue, So it was essentially
a cash cow. Yeah, you're giving out some money.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
But nothing compared to what you're bringing in.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Nothing compared to what you're.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Bringing in, and chances are people would probably be more
likely to get a drink or add on some fries
if they normally wouldn't have because they want to increase
their chances and get an extra piece or two.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So then it's like they're buying more than they probably
would have.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, or hey, go ahead and make that a large
fry so I can maybe get maybe I'll have a
chance at winning. So this FBI office in Jacksonville, they
got contacted of this and they thought it was super strange.
They were like, okay, we'll look into it. They got
(22:07):
this call and they said, well, if we pursue this
and start kind of doing some digging, we don't want
to waste resources on this anonymous caller. Let's talk to
this federal prosecutor by the name of Mark Devereux, US attorney,
and they said, is this something that we should look
into fraud concerning this McDonald's monopoly promotion. Well, Mark Devereux,
(22:37):
he this is odd, we've never said this on this show.
But he used math to say, yes, you need to investigate.
He crunched the numbers. He said, okay, so the chances
of one person winning the million dollars is one in
two hundred and fifty million. He said. The chance they
(23:02):
broke it down for two people that are related to
each other to both win a million dollars is one
in one quadrillion. That's fifteen zeros.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
They said, for three relatives to win this thing, the
chances are one in three hundred quintillion, which is twenty zeros.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
After the three. Basically, this is essentially possible impossible. An
example they always they kept using was you have a
better chance of the three. For three relatives winning this thing,
you've actually got a better chance of being struck twice
by lightning.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So he said, you know what, boys, go ahead and
look into this one.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yeah, I'm thinking something weird foks going on.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Something's a foul at McDonald's. And when we get back
from this short break, we're gonna continue telling you about
this investigation and how this wild story started up. Folks
will be right back after this quick word from our sponsors,
(24:36):
and welcome back to Carolina Crimes Podcast, Episode two forty six,
Part one. And when we left off, we were just
just skiing down the tip of the iceberg here about
this alleged fraud or some somehow fixing the McDonald's Monopoly game.
(24:57):
And like we said, this has been covered. It was
a documentary actually out by Mark Wahlberg told me that.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Was interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It was it was crazy. So when we left off,
we talked about the anonymous call to the Jacksonville FBI
office claiming the three separate million dollar winners in the
McDonald's Monopoly game. They happened to be all related. They
all lived kind of in the same area, and there
was a guy named Uncle Jerry involved in this. So
(25:33):
the FBI they were faced with this task of saying, Okay,
how could this happen? Was this an inside job, you know,
somebody McDonald's was orchestrating. Could this be relatives of theirs
they were getting kickbacks? Could this stretch to the cup
(25:53):
and fry box and hamburger box manufacturers their plants? Yeah,
is this somebody there getting their hands on these pieces
and distributing to people they know or their loved ones.
Could it be the game peacemakers themselves, the people that
printed those Is that somebody we need to look at,
(26:17):
you know? So they had factories the different McDonald's locations,
and also McDonald's corporate they were in the mix. So
the FBI had quite a quandary. They had a dilemma here.
They were like, Okay, so we need to figure out
(26:38):
more about this process. Maybe we need to contact McDonald's corporate.
Some people said, no, that'd be tipping our hand. What
if somebody in corporate's involved? And then they say, hey,
you know we we don't know, and this whole thing
just shuts down. So you had that dilemma. I mean,
do we tell McDonald's what we're doing investigating them or
(27:01):
do we not?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Because it goes back to you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Know, you don't know how this thing is, how it.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Started, where it started.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
I think of It makes me think of those like
movies or shows or even like memes where there's a
huge board it's just like the red strings everywhere and
you're trying to figure out, like, okay, is this where
it starts?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Is this where you know? Just trying to make sense
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Right, So they finally made the decision they were gonna
go contact McDonald's. Uh. They started with their global head
of security, a guy named by the by the name
of Rob Holme. They just said, hey, this is the
(27:47):
Federal Bureau of investigation. We need you to fly to Jacksonville,
Florida right now. We're not gonna tell you why. We
just need to talk to you down here now.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
So not weird.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Even if I was, I mean, completely innocent of everything
in my life. If I get that phone call and
I'm like, A, is this a prank? Is this my
brother doing something to me? B What in the world
have I done? I'd start taking like a personal inventory, like,
oh my god, did I break some kind of federal law?
Am I in trouble here? What's gonna happen?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
You start like going through everything you've ever done in
your life to think of what did I forget that
I've done?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Or who under Bee has screwed up that they need
to talk to me about. Yeah, I mean, somehow I'm
getting dragged into this. I don't want to be here.
We go. So rob Holm, along with two other global
security for McDonald's employees. They did say they said, don't
tell anybody you're coming, which is even more frightening.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
So they tell them where we're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So they got on a plane to Jacksonville, and when
they got there, they came. They still didn't tell them.
At the airport why they were there, drove them to
FBI headquarters Jacksonville and brought them into a conference room.
The agents that we talked about earlier, d Doug Matthews,
Christopher Graham, they were all there and they handed them
(29:22):
the list the names of the three people that won.
They said, do any of these names look familiar to you?
They said no. I said, okay, well here's what we got.
These three individuals have won your a million dollars each
(29:45):
in your monopoly promotion. And they're all related to each other.
And they said, you visibly saw their jaws drop. You know,
they're thinking more about store security, brand security, securing their recipes,
(30:06):
I mean, protection of their food from contamination. They have
a myriad of things to worry about, but this stupid
monopoly game that we've got going on. Okay, now, what
what's going And they explained, hey, you know there's a
breach somewhere. This absolutely, mathematically should not and could not
(30:27):
have happened. They just dropped a bomb on these three
global security executives for McDonald's and they had no clue. Well,
they started to talk. They said, well let me tell
you this too's here. Early two thousand and one, we're
(30:48):
on the customer running another one of these again, another marketing.
This is when we keep going back to the well
on again, it drives revenue for our stores a huge amount.
So what are we gonna do. Do we need to
shut this thing down before it even gets promoted. So
(31:10):
the FBI thought on it. They said, well, what we
would like you to do. Let's go ahead and run it.
I said, you know, let's let's use this thing instead
of trap again. Let's see, let's see what's going on.
So Rob Holme again McDonald's director of Global Security, he
(31:33):
was super hesitant. He couldn't go back to corporate. He
couldn't go back to the board of directors and say, hey, listen,
this is what we've got going on. We need to
stop this because who knows who's involved at this point. Still, yeah,
you know, it could be a McDonald's one of their
chairmen of their board.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
You gotta keep his little people included or informed as possible.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah. Well, Rob was faced with a dilemma now. He
was like, well, we have this information, we know that
this game is somehow rigged, and we're gonna allow it
to happen. He said, what would that do to our
pr if it got out to the public that hey,
(32:18):
we knew you were never gonna win this thing more
than likely, so but we let it go on anyway.
So that was you know, corporate conscientiousness, corporate responsibility ethics
that came into play. And so they had a huge
decision and they said, you know what, let's go ahead
(32:42):
and do it. Let's go ahead, let's try to put
an endo this thing, and let's help the FBI as
much as we can. So the FBI was faced. They said, okay, well,
this is gonna go on later this year. Maybe we're
gonna set this trap, maybe we'll find out something. And
actually the McDonald's monopoly promotion is going on currently as
(33:03):
we Yes, yes, I rarely eat at McDonald's, but seeing
that yesterday, I got it after the City Festival and
I was like, man, quarter pounder, sure would be good,
and man, it hit the spot. But I also got
me a yeah, I got me a couple of little pieces,
(33:24):
got me a free fry, I think. So the FBI
they had to work backwards with this thing. They're like, okay,
we can't we don't know the origin yet, but we
can find it out. Let's go ahead and look at
one of these guys. Let's go ahead and look at
this million dollar winter. This guy Michael Hoover. Now Michael Hoover.
(33:51):
He was a large, gregarious man in his sixties, very jovial,
easy to get along with a family. And when he
cashed in, he won a million dollars. And when you
sign for the million dollars, when you win, the caveat
(34:15):
to win in these big prizes is that the winners
agreed to permission for permission to use their name and
likeness in future promotions of this game. So you're gonna
get a million dollars. Yeah, I'll sign, I'll check the box,
I'll agree to the terms and conditions, whatever you say.
Just give me my check. Yep. So nobody's really reading that,
but they do.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Well.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Agent Doug Matthews came up with this wild idea. He
was like, Okay, we need to talk to Michael Hoover,
but we don't want to tip our hand and let
him know what we know. So since we have this
permission to use his name, of image and likeness, let's
(34:57):
go undercover. Let's pretend that we're a film crew and
let's go talk to this Hoover character and just pumping
with it. I mean, try to get as much information
as we can from this guy. Let's give you. He's like,
I'll be the director, You'll be the lighting guy. I
mean he had it all playing out in his mind,
just super overly excited and over anxious.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I'll be the interviewer.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, like a like a chihuahua. They had to calm
him down. And uh so what they did they were
they came up with this idea and they contacted one
of the marketing directors from McDonald's, a lady named Amy Murray. Amy.
She was like, okay. They were like, we want you
to go with us. You've got the product knowledge. You
you are the rep for McDonald's. You're gonna come in.
(35:42):
And he's like, I'm just gonna be like that, pretend
to be the hired hand in this this director for
this offshoot media company. And he even said, what what
are directors wear? And she was like, they look like
they come right off the golf course that was in
the documentary. And so he wore like this polo shirt
(36:02):
and slacks and out they were like pretending to swing
his golf. I was like, you he hammed it up.
He played it up, and it was it was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
You have to become the character in order.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yes, So they got in contact with Michael Hoover and
they went to Hoover's home. They said, hey, this is
such an interesting story. We're so happy for you. Congratulations
Amy Murray. She brought the big check that you see,
the big phony check on cardboard, and hey, here's what
(36:40):
we're giving to you, the million dollars. Let's get you
to talk a little bit about it. And so they
went on with like, tell us about the day you won,
tell us what happened. And of course Michael Hoover he
was more than happy to tell his story. Oh yeah,
he said, Well, I was relaxing on the beach, and
(37:01):
you know, I had fallen asleep and got some sand
on me, and I was out there. I had a
magazine I was reading and went out to wash the
sand off my legs, and I was he said, I
was kind of a klutz. He said, I dropped my
magazine in the in the ocean and it went away.
I never got a chance to read it. So he said,
(37:25):
after that, I packed up, I was headed home. I
had to stop by the local grocery store to get
some stuff before I went to the house, and uh,
there on the rack was the same People magazine I
dropped and I was like, yeah, you know, I was
really looking forward to reading that. I'll I'll just get
another copy. So that's he said. That's what he did,
(37:45):
and when he got home, it had the ad in
there for the McDonald's Monopoly game, and he pulled it
off and he was an instant winner. Oh yeah, a
million dollars, how about that? So that was his story
and by doing this, this is what the FBI was
trying to do, was to get his response. They wanted
(38:06):
to see what Michael Hoover would do, you know after
he told this story and they took uh this is
where kind of agent Matthews went rogue. They said, they
were like, well, you know what would be great. You know,
let's go out to the Let's go out to the
grocery store that you bought it from, and let's get
(38:29):
let's get a picture of you and a People magazine outside. Yeah,
let's do that. So they went out, they did that,
They got a got his picture out in front. He
was telling the story. They were like, what are you
gonna do? With the money and he said, oh, I'm
gonna buy a boat, and math Agent Matthews just played it.
He was like, cool man, what do you What kind
(38:49):
of boat are you gonna get? What are you gonna
name it? And he said, uh, oh, I'm gonna name
my boat ruthless scoundrel. And they were like, oh, that's
that's radman. Hell yeah, brother, and just playing it up,
just getting this guy more and more comfortable. And then
Agent Matthew said, Okay, we've been to the grocery store.
Let's go to the beach. Let's go to the beach
where you dropped your magazine initially, and let's let's get
(39:11):
your story again. Tell it again to us, and let's
get some shots of me panning around you and everything.
And he had the big, big cardboard check out there,
and this bro on the beach who'd had a little
too many he came up and he grabbed the check
and ran like this drunk guy on the beach. So
(39:34):
Agent Matthew's playing the director. He kicked it in the
high gear, went and tackled the guy on the beach.
He got the check back, and I mean, of course,
the check in real you can't take it to a
banking cash more. But he went. That happened, and that
was kind of the end of the day. And of
course Amy Murray, she was being dragged all over town.
(39:54):
She had her high heels on this executive for McDonald's
and she's like, what in the hell are we doing? Dude?
He was like, no, I just got to give him
say more stuff. The longer we can keep him talking,
the better we like.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
He's told his story fifteen times. What are you not understanding?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, So finally the FBI left under the ruse of
the production company and they wiretapped Michael Hoover's phone. They're like, okay,
let's see what he does now. You know, he was
so proud of his winnings and not long at all
(40:32):
after Agent Matthews and this undercover film crew left Michael
Hoover's house, he placed a phone call to a man
named Andrew glam Or AJ Glom and AJ Glom. He
had a colorful past. He was formally convicted of federal
(40:55):
drug trafficking charges. He'd serve some federal prison time, kind
of had a checker passed. I'll say, now, this guy,
he wasn't known to be a violent dude or anything
like that, or I don't want to say a victim
was crime w drugs are, but he he wasn't a killer,
(41:15):
cold blooded killer. He sold drug He did what he
did to make ends meet. Well, the phone call went
like this. Michael Hoover called him and he said, Andy,
me and Andrew Glomb. He said they were here, and
they believed everything the people magazine stuff. They believed all
(41:38):
of it. And the two laughed and laughed about how
they had gotten away with this thing. You know, they
were they were more than elated to say, hey, we
we we got we got away with this one. And
it was a very telling phone call that they were like, okay,
so this Andrew, this Aj Glomb, he's involved. Michael Hoover
(41:59):
obviously did not win this legitimately. And they joked on
the phone too. They said, Hoover said, hey, this you
know this. Domas asked me what I was gonna name
my boat, and I said, ruthless scoundrel. We got him,
you know, just saying this out loud on the phone.
(42:19):
So what this gave the FBI authorization to do was
to analyze the phone records from all the previous big
money winners what they did is set aside a four
month span on each of them from the date they won,
being in the middle, so two months beforehand, two months afterhand,
(42:41):
after after the fact. They're like, we gotta we got
to see who these people are in contact with. We
need to look at their outgoing calls, their incoming calls.
And sure enough, things slowly started to match up. And
we're gonna talk more about this right after we get
back from this short break, folks will be right back
(43:19):
and welcome back to Carolina Crimes, Episode two forty six,
Part one. And this wild story about the McDonald's monopoly
promotion scam a legend at this point, it's still under investigation. Well,
when we left off, we talked about the FBI. They said, Okay,
(43:41):
what we got to do is look at these winners.
We need to check out their phone records. We need
to see what matches up. You know, we got to
connect these dots. So when they started looking at these
numbers of all the previous big money winners, they found
some common.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Numbers heavy before the prize, heavy after the prize was awarded,
and then never before or never again.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So they're like, huh, one particular number stood out it
was one registered to a man named Jerome Jacobson or Jerry,
remember uncle Jerry, And so they decided to look into Hey,
(44:37):
who is this Jerome Jacobson character? What's his deal? So
Jerome Jacobson he grew up actually wanting to be an
FBI agent. In nineteen seventy seven, Jerry he had become
(44:57):
a police officer in Hollywood, Florida. In nineteen eighty one,
he married his first wife, Marsha. He became a stepfather
to his two sons. He was described as a very
meticulous man. He was a good cop, likable. One morning,
(45:20):
Jerry had trouble lifting his arm, whether it was a
shave or brush his teeth. There were a couple different
sources said some different things, and he kept having trouble
moving that arm throughout the day. He was not feeling
right and went to his doctor and was diagnosed with
(45:41):
Gilliam Bray syndrome. What Gilliam Bray syndrome is is it
can cause paralysis and loss of motor movements. It can
be very debilitating, it can cause death. So with this diagnose, unfortunately,
(46:02):
Jerry was forced to leave the police department. Jerry, his
wife Marcia, her children. They decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia,
not too awful far away. There Marcia could find some work.
She found work with a printing company, did printing, and
(46:23):
Jerry he was close to medical experts on Gilliam Beret
it's a neurological disease. He was close to a hospital
or a I'm sorry, a facility that specialized in treatment
of diseases like this. Now. His wife, Marcia, she was
(46:45):
interviewed on that documentary and she said, you know, I'd
give him fifteen minutes per day to be feel sorry
for himself, and then after that we went to work.
He did his pet, went to treatment and his mobility
was somewhat returned to normal. This is something that people
(47:08):
live with. Friend of mine, Amy On here in town,
she had about with this as well. Footballston, the former
center for the Dallas Cowboys, Travis Frederick, he suffered from
the same thing. But you can be able to live
your life somewhat normally. And Jerry Jacobson was just not
(47:31):
as a police officer. So in nineteen eighty two, Jerry
Jacobson he got a job working security for a company
there in Atlanta called Simon Marketing. Incorporated. They are the
(47:52):
same people that would eventually make make the game pieces
for mc donald's Monopoly promotion. Everyone there at Simon Marketing
they described Jerry as likable, very humble, generous. They talked
about how awesome of a cookie was. For all their
(48:12):
covered dishes, he would bring in ribs.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I was like, hell, wow, dips or something.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Tell us out with raisins in it, but yeah, or
something like that. But yeah, this guy would bring slabs
ribs and I mean no wonder. They considered him likable. Hell,
I'd like him too, sounds like my kind of guy. Well, Eventually,
Jerry climbed the ranks at Simon Simon Marketing, Incorporated, mostly
(48:42):
due to his work ethic He was. He was a
great security officer. He was very thorough, paid attention to everything.
He was we said meticulous before, but I mean to
a tea he had all his eyes dotted, all his
teas crossed. Well, let's talk about where he was performing
his security duties at, and that was, of course Simon Marketing.
(49:06):
The facility there was extremely secure. That was one of
the reasons McDonald's had gone with them any of their
promotional products that needed to be like for games or sweepstakes.
They got printed by Dittler Brothers, who was also who
(49:27):
Marcia worked for. Okay, now, Dittler Brothers, they were high
on the hall, very well respected in this industry. They
printed items such as lottery tickets. I never really thought
about that before. I was like, you know, they just
appear at the scratch offs. Where do you print these
things at?
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Yeah, like there's a place that does this.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah. They printed things like US postal stamps, and eventually
they printed the winning tokens for the monopoly promotion for McDonald's.
Those were extremely secure, especially the winning tokens. Everyone in
that building knew when those were being printed. Oh, they
(50:11):
were put into two vaults. Jerry is the head of
security now for Simon Marketing. He was present. He would
put them through the paces. They would do dealer printing.
They would go through drills. You know, they would recreate Okay,
this is what we're gonna do. Here's how I'm going
to open this. And he'd say, no, you know you
(50:32):
did something wrong right here. Now I know your code?
Start over again? Yeah again again. Yeah. He would do
that and the high level winners those tokens, they were
taken personally. Along with little seed what they called seeds.
(50:52):
So you had these winning tokens and you had like
twenty blanks with it, or twenty that were just not winners.
They would be taken two of companies in here here
there's a winner amongst these, put them at random on
boxes nobody knows, and they were personally taken most of
the time by Jerry Jacobson to these cup fry box manufacturers.
(51:18):
They were to be put on completely at random on
the packaging so there would be no foul play involved
the winners. If you pulled a winning token for these
monopoly promotions, they were mailed back to Simon Marketing. If
(51:40):
it was an alleged winner. They were all opened with
witnesses present, and the opening of these letters were or
these mailings were video recorded as well. So well, I mean,
you're talking about giving away a million.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
A lot of steps in the security.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Yeah, way more than I thought there would be. This
is interesting too. Each legit winning token it had on
it a pre planned error so they knew it was real.
Like say one of the letters was missing a portion.
They used Boardwalk for an example. In the documentary. They
(52:22):
said part of the k would be missing or a
chunk would be taken out so.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
That people couldn't like recreate or counterfeit them.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah. They also said that there was a code that
could only be seen with a black light on those
winning tokens as well, so they were doubly sure that
this was a legit winner. When it was mailed back
in or you know, those people would be notified a
yeah you he tried to. I don't know if any
(52:51):
criminal charges would come, but yeah, you tried to fake this.
This is not a legitimate when I'm sorry, sorry to
re regret to inform you that you did not win
a million.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
No, I think you knew that.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Well, there became another Jerry that was involved in this story,
and he actually was another larger than life character, a
man by the name of Jerry Colombo. He lived in Florida.
(53:25):
He was a native New Yorker with I don't know
how involved he was. People kind of skirted around this
in every story, but he allegedly had mob connections. Okay, Well,
Jerry Colombo. He won a large prize from the McDonald's
(53:49):
monopoly promotion. He won a Dodge Viper oh, which was hot. Yeah, boy,
back in the mid nineties, I remember one of my
first boss he had one. I was like, dude, you're
selling a lot of fish up here at the Mayflower
man to be driving that, and I just thought that
was the coolest thing ever. But yeah, old Jerry Columbo.
(54:09):
He won a Dodge Viper. He was involved. So at
this point, these wire taps, they weren't really getting investigators
anywhere besides the fact that they knew there were several
similar numbers. Jerry Colombo's number started popping up. They were like, okay,
(54:31):
so this guy that won the Dodge Viper. He was
even on a McDonald's commercial. He wanted to be an actor.
One of his family members said he was a combination.
I think it was his brother. He said he was
a combination, this Colombo of Tony Soprano and Rodney Dangerfield.
He was always a life of the party, always fun
to be around.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Wow, what a description.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, what a combo. And I was like, okay, oh,
this guy sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds
like somebody would have hung out with. I'm not gonna
be not gonna lie. So these wiretaps, they weren't hearing
any chatter. They weren't hearing anything, so they need to
take another angle. They need to shake this thing up
a little bit, meaning the FBI. They needed to get
(55:16):
these past winners talking. They needed to open the lines
of communication again. So Agent Doug Matthews, the same guy
that came up with the hey, let's pretend to film
these guys, he came forward and said, I got an idea.
Oh boy, let's shake some things up here. What we're
gonna do here in two thousand and one, we're gonna
(55:38):
go back to nineteen eighty seven, and what we're gonna
say is gonna happen is we're gonna have a reunion
of all past big money winners and we're gonna say, hey,
we're trying to promote this for McDonald's again. We need you.
What we're gonna do, We're gonna have a reunion, all
expense paid trip to Las Vegas. Oh, everybody, come on,
we're gonna have a big party. Read balloons. Ronald McDonald's
(56:01):
gonna be there. We're gonna we're gonna really make this
a big deal. Brother, And they said, you know, we're
gonna we're gonna film a little interview with each person
in Vegas. But to see tell us your story how
you won. And then they said, well, you know, why
don't we film you beforehand and we'll come to you. Well,
we'll make this happen and we'll see exactly how you won.
(56:24):
We want your story, we want to celebrate you. So
again he contacts old poor Amy Murray at oh gosh,
A McDonald's like, hey, we got another one. Let let's
do this.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Let's do and she was like, Okay, I'm gonna walk
and choose this time.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, let's see if we could do this thing. And
let's put this together and I'll start getting the names
together and we'll start contacting these people and see what happens.
And right there is where we're gonna leave off part
one of episode two forty six, and the FBI the
True try to get these people to talk more and
(57:02):
more and to figure out exactly how this occurred. And
even if they have the right uncle Jerry involved, is
it Jerry Colombo, is it Jerry Jacobson, is it somebody
they don't even know about that's doing these things. So
when we come back right after this with a part
(57:22):
two of this episode, we'll start getting into the nitty
gritty how this thing worked, how this came about and
all the other players involved. There's religious strip clubs in
next week's episode, Mafia ties, deaths, all kind lies I mean,
(57:43):
and more just braggadaccio while police work by Doug Matthews.
And we're gonna talk about that on the next episode,
Part two of episode two forty six. So until next time,
thank you for listening to Carolina Crimes.
For over three hundred and fifty years, the state of
South Carolina has been the setting for some of the
most horrendous crimes ever committed. Some have gained global notoriety,
some have been forgotten, and others have been swept under
the rug completely. Now, two South Carolina natives and true
(00:26):
crime enthusiasts have teamed up to examine these heinous acts
in detail, giving their perspective of the evil that has
resided in the Palmetto State. You're listening to Carolina Crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And welcome back to Carolina Crimes, episode two forty six.
I'm one of your hosts, Matt Hyres, along.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
With Danielle Myers, and boy well, he got.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
A good one for you today. It's gonna be a
multi parter, So strap in, this is going to be
a wild ride. I promise this has been one I've
been waiting for. But before we get started, I just
want to tell you thank you, Danielle for putting together
that collection of stories last week. Get everybody in the
Halloween spirit, jo gotten your spook on and your scary stuff,
(01:18):
got your trick or treating, sitting back popping some candy,
listening to some Carolina Crimes We appreciate you, but thank
you for all the feedback and everybody that chimed in about, Hey,
I've heard this legend. I've heard about the story some
of the things that you shared last week about the scoopy,
spooky graveyards, the headless horsemen of Camden, the bride bride
(01:42):
of Camden that stowed away the couple or the thropple
out and Paully's Island, wild stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And sleeping preachers and yeah, that.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Was that was bizarre. I went down the rabbit hole
on that this week. That's a really interesting and cool
story for sure. But thank you so much. Go ahead
and do some housekeeping before we get rolling into this one.
Like I said, this is going to be a couple
different parts because there are a lot of moving pieces
in this one, a lot of game pieces in this one.
(02:15):
So folks, if you're not already following us on social media,
check us out at Carolina Crimes Podcast over on Facebook,
also over on Twitter at sc Crimes pod. And also
if you're listening on Apple iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, those
five star review I think on the Apple mediums you're
able to leave us a little review that helps the
(02:36):
algorithm go up. Please let us know what you like
about the show. Tell us your pets, names, what you
had for supper, anything like that. We certainly appreciate it.
We're gonna have a lot of thank yous at the
end of this episode and we finally get there. Also,
if you're looking for some cold weather gear, it's chilly
now here in South Carolina. Gets you some hoodies. My
(02:57):
daughter and her friends just got a couple. Made them pay,
but they had to order it from Carolina crimesstore dot com.
And you can do so as well and get some
of that Carolina Crimes paraphernalia. Well, Danielle, we've kind of
discussed this one already, and usually at the beginning of
(03:19):
all of our podcasts we talk about the setting, a
little bit of background information from each from each episode,
and I guess the best setting for this one would
be a South Carolina landmark. We're going to talk about
a couple of American institutions and good people gone rogue,
and then subjectively if they were good people and just
(03:43):
how rogue they went. But we're going to start off
talking about lake Hartwell, lake Hartwell, it's a fifty six
thousand acre lake or a Reservoir as it's designated, and
it's situated right in the upstate on the border of
South Carolina and Georgia. Now Lake Hartwell it was created,
(04:09):
is man made lake created in nineteen sixty three by
the damming of the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers. Now it
was dammed as part of the Flood Control Act of
nineteen fifty and the Heartwell dam itself costs sixty eight
point four million dollars and took eight years to build
(04:32):
a lot of the low lying land that ended up
being flooded. You hear stories about Lake Lanier in Georgia,
it was formed about the same way, But Lake Lanier
has a lot of its own ghost stories that goes
along with it flooded towns and graveyards. But the area
right here where Lake Hartwell sat was home to hunting
(04:54):
ground to Cherokee Native American tribe, several other tribe around
that area, and that area was flooded out to create
this massive, massive lake. Now the lake itself, Lake Hartwood,
was named for revolutionary war hero Nancy Hart, a female
(05:16):
oh Okay. Now, she seemed like a tough as nails
backwoods woman. Wasn't taking anything off of anybody, and it's
told there's a lot of tons of folklore about her
what she did. But there were six Tory soldiers that
came and wanted to force her to make make them
(05:37):
something to eat. Cook for us, lady, make us a sandwich.
She said, okay. She was an unwavering patriot and said, okay,
you know, come back, it'll be ready about this time.
Come get your bellies full, and waiting on the other
side of the door. When they got there was her
in several firearms, and she let Lusa hale a gun
(06:00):
fire and permanently compromised six Tory soldiers.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So that's that's exactly who Lake Heartwell is named for.
And a great honorable namesake. I like it. Yeah, name
for a female as well. Now, the average depth of
Lake Hartwell is forty five feet, but there are portions
that reach one hundred and eighty five feet deep when
(06:30):
it is at full pond, And by full pond I
mean has different levels. Of course. They whoever controls the
heart Will Dam can control the level of the lake.
They can let some water out, they can prevent water
from getting out. If you're in drought times, several serious
droughts over the last twenty five years have occurred up there.
(06:50):
You know, you've got docks, floating docks laying on the ground.
I've seen several pictures of those. So they really have
to be on top of where the water levels are
are in Lake Heart will and depend greatly upon the
rain and run off from the mountains. Yeah, certainly. Well.
To start this week's episode, of course, we've covered Lake Heartwool.
(07:12):
We're gonna talk about in this episode. Two American institutions.
One a Parker Brothers board game. The first year is
in existence. It wasn't a Parker Brothers game, but they
did purchase it. Probably my favorite board game of all.
(07:35):
I don't think it is my first one I ever played.
I played some Shoots and Lighters, High Ho the Dario
or something with the spinning wheel and little apples and.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Or cherry high Ho cherio.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and kind of an attempt to Twister. I mean,
as an only child, it was kind of hard to
play Twister yourself, Yeah, and kind of weird to get
your mom and dad to play with you. That was
that was weird. But the game I'm talking about, and
we're going to focus on is the game of monopoly.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I love Monopoly, and I think that it very much.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Test families. Yeah, it tests relationships.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
You're wherewithal It tests your I guess, intuition, your graciousness.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Gotten too many of fights with my older sister she
was ruthless.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, it can make you ruthless. It wasn't designed to
be that way. Originally the game was designed to kind
of warn about greed, but it has evolved through the
years to kind of promote greedy if you're looking to
win the game, if you're hotting under a rock. You
don't know what monopoly is. It's a square board game
(08:53):
where you go again around the perimeter. You buy properties,
you charge rents. You can build houses and hotels in
order to order to charge more rents. Basically a game
about economic decisions and what you want to make of that.
The object is to bankrupt the other players. That's how
(09:16):
you end up winning. And over three hundred million copies
of this board game have been sold throughout the years.
I still have one I got for Christmas. I think
I might have been seven when I got it. It
was a fiftieth anniversary edition. It's really wild. It's got
(09:40):
like little gold game pieces. It's weird, but I mean
we've still got it top of my top of my hallroom,
hallway closet. There's several variations that have come up through
the years. I think there's a mobile game you can
play now. Yeah, several different quick versions. Because the looking
(10:05):
on the old Google machine can you could say it
says it takes two to five minutes to set up
and can take three hundred and sixty five hours.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh my gosh, it's not a short game.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
No, it can be. Really, it could be short. It
could be a couple of hours, or it could be day.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Three to five business day.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, and I engaged in one of those. It's one
I'll never never forget. I think I was around ten.
We went with some of my dad's family to Edistoe
Beach and played with some uncles and cousins, and I
was by far and away the youngest person. So with
the older crowd, there's a lot of them Miller lights involved,
(10:51):
and that game just stayed set up and went on
and on. I really don't think we ever finished it.
And people have a variation of rules, you know, with
your free parking and everything. But Monopoly, for the most part,
what you need to remember for this story is it's
a game board with different properties. They're matched up by color,
(11:12):
so that when you get all of one certain color,
then you can build or win prizes depending on the variation.
And talk about that. The second American institution we're going
to talk about might be one of the most American
(11:33):
institutions there is worldwide, well known, right up there with Walmart, Nike,
some of the other most well known brands. And I'm
talking about probably the quintessential American restaurant. And we're talking
about McDonald's.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I think I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, McDonald's, of course, founded in May of nineteen forty
by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. If you've ever seen
the movie The Founder with Michael Keaton, he plays Ray Kroc,
who basically I don't want to say who do the
McDonald brothers, but let's just say Ray Croc came away
(12:19):
owning franchises of McDonald's and it got to the point
where the McDonald brothers could not even use their own
last name for a restaurant. And the popularity and widespread
epidemic of McDonald's it went worldwide. It's skyrocketed under ray
Croc one of, if not the most recognizable worldwide brand,
(12:44):
and today it has almost forty two thousand locations, Wow, worldwide.
So incredible. Now, how did the two of these fit together?
And what's le heart we'll got to do with it? Well,
we're gonna talk about that right now, and we're gonna
(13:06):
go back. We're gonna go back to the year two
thousand and one, okay to start off with, and we're
gonna go to the Jacksonville, Florida office of the FBI. Now, Jacksonville.
Everything I've read about this, there's been documentaries, there's been
(13:28):
podcasts on this topic, but this Jacksonville FBI office has
always been described as the work they do is are
very important, But it wasn't the glitz and glamour. It's
you wouldn't see a TV show made about the Jacksonville
FBI office. A lot of what they had to deal
(13:50):
with there was insurance fraud, things that were not a
not your sexy crime, you're not chasing down you know,
millions of dollars of cocaine on speedboat or anything like that.
They were situated right between Atlanta and Miami, so kind
of everything in between really fell to this office. Well,
(14:16):
a call came in to this Jacksonville FBI branch and
it was an anonymous caller and they said, we need
to let you know that the McDonald's monopoly promotion is rigged.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Okay, what.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And there were a couple agents. There was a senior agent,
Rick Dent, a young agent named Doug Matthews who is
an absolute character. We'll talk about him throughout this throughout
this episode. And their squad director Christopher Graham. You know,
this kind of wasn't afterthought, okay. An anonymous caller called
(15:04):
in said the monopoly monopoly game at McDonald's was rigged.
So it was a promotion and uh, nobody really paid
attention to it, and maybe it's.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
A person that's mad because they couldn't no matter how
much they bought, they couldn't get the last piece that
they needed to win that prize, you know. And said
they're like, is this a disgruntled player.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Maybe or you'll see go on. But Doug Matthews, young agent,
he was like, well, I'll follow up on this call,
this anonymous tip, and he called this person back and
they said, okay, so what we're looking at why we
(15:49):
called is there's three separate winners. You can win up
to a million dollars. You can win boats, you can
win smaller cash prize like twenty five thousand dollars. You
can win as little as like a free small fry,
free yeah, bacon, egg and cheese biscuit or something like that.
(16:10):
But these big money winners, they're three of them, and
they're all related. Now they don't have the same last name,
but through marriage and you know this winter his sister
in law's brother in law one, and you start connecting
(16:32):
these dots, but all three are loosely related.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
They're not strangers.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah, and this just doesn't add up. They all lived
in this northern Florida area, real close to each other.
And the only real item of information they gave they said,
there's somebody involved that goes by the name of uncle Jerry.
(16:59):
So he's like, Okay, this is kind of weird. You know,
maybe we need to look into this. And if you're
not familiar with what we're talking about here when we
say McDonald's monopoly, here's how the game works. McDonald's issues
a game board, or you can get the game board
(17:20):
online if you want to print it out, or back
in those days, it would come in some magazines. The
promotion started in nineteen eighty seven. Oh yeah, we had
the game board magneted or stuck on our refrigerator. Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I remember it growing up, but I guess I didn't
realize that it was before.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah. Yeah, you tape, you tape your little pieces on there.
You're like, oh, we need Pennsylvania Avenue or Yeah. There's
some instant winners, and there were several ways that you
got these pieces, but what you were the object with
the mcdonald'sman, what you're trying to do is get all
the pieces together that match that certain color, and you
(18:05):
win that prize assigned to whatever it is. I mean
some you know, I think the purple ones, which are
the lower rent properties on the monopoly board, you get
fifty bucks something something similar to that. But the main prize,
one of the most sought afters, were, of course, the
two Blues. You got Boardwalk in park Place. I think
(18:27):
Boardwalk was out there, but I think you were always
looking for park Place or vice versa. But I always
remember you're kind of looking for There was.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Never anybody who could find two.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yes, yes, and our who knows what I mean. I'm
sure our board was thrown away after the promotion was over.
But that's what it did and how you played. How
you got these pieces from McDonald's. You would get them
off of different food items. If you got a big mat,
there was one or two little tabs on there that
you pull off your food. You could pull them off
(18:59):
drink cupski boxes, yeah, the large French fry boxes, not
the small paperwes. Back then maybe a McDLT. You'd get those,
but they were stuck on there and you had to
peel them off and you saw what piece you got. Now,
McDonald's they had a marketing company because McDonald's they they're
(19:23):
in the food business and if you watch that movie
the founder, they are in the essentially in the real
estate business is what they're doing. But they're more worried
about selling food. They don't know anything really about marketing.
So they farmed this thing out to marketing companies. And
(19:44):
this particular marketing company that ran this promotion was called
Simon Marketing Incorporated. Simon Marketing was actually credited with coming
up with the happy meal concept. Oh so that's wild,
they said, Okay, And people were like, well, children don't
(20:06):
have money, they're not walking in here. And they were like, well,
you put a toy inside, cut down the portions, and
every time they come by McDonald's, they're going to scream
and squall at their parents to pull into McDonald's and
buy a happy meal. So these folks were brilliant. Well,
they came up with this promotional game, the Monopoly game.
(20:27):
Of course, the game pieces we talked about how to
get those. You could also get game pieces. At one
point you could ask a cashier for a free game
piece and they have to hand you one, no purchase necessary,
So there was kind of a loophole there, so it
wasn't gambling. Also, there were ads promoting the Monopoly promotion
(20:50):
and magazines such as People Magazine, Newsweek, things like that,
where you could had two pieces in there. Some of
those Sunday parade papers, do you remember those that game
in the Sunday paper, A little glossy got a weekly
magazine thing. Some would come in there. But the Monopoly game,
(21:11):
every time McDonald's rolled that out, it would result in
a forty percent increase in revenue, So it was essentially
a cash cow. Yeah, you're giving out some money.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
But nothing compared to what you're bringing in.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Nothing compared to what you're.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Bringing in, and chances are people would probably be more
likely to get a drink or add on some fries
if they normally wouldn't have because they want to increase
their chances and get an extra piece or two.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So then it's like they're buying more than they probably
would have.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, or hey, go ahead and make that a large
fry so I can maybe get maybe I'll have a
chance at winning. So this FBI office in Jacksonville, they
got contacted of this and they thought it was super strange.
They were like, okay, we'll look into it. They got
(22:07):
this call and they said, well, if we pursue this
and start kind of doing some digging, we don't want
to waste resources on this anonymous caller. Let's talk to
this federal prosecutor by the name of Mark Devereux, US attorney,
and they said, is this something that we should look
into fraud concerning this McDonald's monopoly promotion. Well, Mark Devereux,
(22:37):
he this is odd, we've never said this on this show.
But he used math to say, yes, you need to investigate.
He crunched the numbers. He said, okay, so the chances
of one person winning the million dollars is one in
two hundred and fifty million. He said. The chance they
(23:02):
broke it down for two people that are related to
each other to both win a million dollars is one
in one quadrillion. That's fifteen zeros.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
They said, for three relatives to win this thing, the
chances are one in three hundred quintillion, which is twenty zeros.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
After the three. Basically, this is essentially possible impossible. An
example they always they kept using was you have a
better chance of the three. For three relatives winning this thing,
you've actually got a better chance of being struck twice
by lightning.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So he said, you know what, boys, go ahead and
look into this one.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yeah, I'm thinking something weird foks going on.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Something's a foul at McDonald's. And when we get back
from this short break, we're gonna continue telling you about
this investigation and how this wild story started up. Folks
will be right back after this quick word from our sponsors,
(24:36):
and welcome back to Carolina Crimes Podcast, Episode two forty six,
Part one. And when we left off, we were just
just skiing down the tip of the iceberg here about
this alleged fraud or some somehow fixing the McDonald's Monopoly game.
(24:57):
And like we said, this has been covered. It was
a documentary actually out by Mark Wahlberg told me that.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Was interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It was it was crazy. So when we left off,
we talked about the anonymous call to the Jacksonville FBI
office claiming the three separate million dollar winners in the
McDonald's Monopoly game. They happened to be all related. They
all lived kind of in the same area, and there
was a guy named Uncle Jerry involved in this. So
(25:33):
the FBI they were faced with this task of saying, Okay,
how could this happen? Was this an inside job, you know,
somebody McDonald's was orchestrating. Could this be relatives of theirs
they were getting kickbacks? Could this stretch to the cup
(25:53):
and fry box and hamburger box manufacturers their plants? Yeah,
is this somebody there getting their hands on these pieces
and distributing to people they know or their loved ones.
Could it be the game peacemakers themselves, the people that
printed those Is that somebody we need to look at,
(26:17):
you know? So they had factories the different McDonald's locations,
and also McDonald's corporate they were in the mix. So
the FBI had quite a quandary. They had a dilemma here.
They were like, Okay, so we need to figure out
(26:38):
more about this process. Maybe we need to contact McDonald's corporate.
Some people said, no, that'd be tipping our hand. What
if somebody in corporate's involved? And then they say, hey,
you know we we don't know, and this whole thing
just shuts down. So you had that dilemma. I mean,
do we tell McDonald's what we're doing investigating them or
(27:01):
do we not?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Because it goes back to you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Know, you don't know how this thing is, how it.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Started, where it started.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
I think of It makes me think of those like
movies or shows or even like memes where there's a
huge board it's just like the red strings everywhere and
you're trying to figure out, like, okay, is this where
it starts?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Is this where you know? Just trying to make sense
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Right, So they finally made the decision they were gonna
go contact McDonald's. Uh. They started with their global head
of security, a guy named by the by the name
of Rob Holme. They just said, hey, this is the
(27:47):
Federal Bureau of investigation. We need you to fly to Jacksonville,
Florida right now. We're not gonna tell you why. We
just need to talk to you down here now.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
So not weird.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Even if I was, I mean, completely innocent of everything
in my life. If I get that phone call and
I'm like, A, is this a prank? Is this my
brother doing something to me? B What in the world
have I done? I'd start taking like a personal inventory, like,
oh my god, did I break some kind of federal law?
Am I in trouble here? What's gonna happen?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
You start like going through everything you've ever done in
your life to think of what did I forget that
I've done?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Or who under Bee has screwed up that they need
to talk to me about. Yeah, I mean, somehow I'm
getting dragged into this. I don't want to be here.
We go. So rob Holm, along with two other global
security for McDonald's employees. They did say they said, don't
tell anybody you're coming, which is even more frightening.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
So they tell them where we're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So they got on a plane to Jacksonville, and when
they got there, they came. They still didn't tell them.
At the airport why they were there, drove them to
FBI headquarters Jacksonville and brought them into a conference room.
The agents that we talked about earlier, d Doug Matthews,
Christopher Graham, they were all there and they handed them
(29:22):
the list the names of the three people that won.
They said, do any of these names look familiar to you?
They said no. I said, okay, well here's what we got.
These three individuals have won your a million dollars each
(29:45):
in your monopoly promotion. And they're all related to each other.
And they said, you visibly saw their jaws drop. You know,
they're thinking more about store security, brand security, securing their recipes,
(30:06):
I mean, protection of their food from contamination. They have
a myriad of things to worry about, but this stupid
monopoly game that we've got going on. Okay, now, what
what's going And they explained, hey, you know there's a
breach somewhere. This absolutely, mathematically should not and could not
(30:27):
have happened. They just dropped a bomb on these three
global security executives for McDonald's and they had no clue. Well,
they started to talk. They said, well let me tell
you this too's here. Early two thousand and one, we're
(30:48):
on the customer running another one of these again, another marketing.
This is when we keep going back to the well
on again, it drives revenue for our stores a huge amount.
So what are we gonna do. Do we need to
shut this thing down before it even gets promoted. So
(31:10):
the FBI thought on it. They said, well, what we
would like you to do. Let's go ahead and run it.
I said, you know, let's let's use this thing instead
of trap again. Let's see, let's see what's going on.
So Rob Holme again McDonald's director of Global Security, he
(31:33):
was super hesitant. He couldn't go back to corporate. He
couldn't go back to the board of directors and say, hey, listen,
this is what we've got going on. We need to
stop this because who knows who's involved at this point. Still, yeah,
you know, it could be a McDonald's one of their
chairmen of their board.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
You gotta keep his little people included or informed as possible.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah. Well, Rob was faced with a dilemma now. He
was like, well, we have this information, we know that
this game is somehow rigged, and we're gonna allow it
to happen. He said, what would that do to our
pr if it got out to the public that hey,
(32:18):
we knew you were never gonna win this thing more
than likely, so but we let it go on anyway.
So that was you know, corporate conscientiousness, corporate responsibility ethics
that came into play. And so they had a huge
decision and they said, you know what, let's go ahead
(32:42):
and do it. Let's go ahead, let's try to put
an endo this thing, and let's help the FBI as
much as we can. So the FBI was faced. They said, okay, well,
this is gonna go on later this year. Maybe we're
gonna set this trap, maybe we'll find out something. And
actually the McDonald's monopoly promotion is going on currently as
(33:03):
we Yes, yes, I rarely eat at McDonald's, but seeing
that yesterday, I got it after the City Festival and
I was like, man, quarter pounder, sure would be good,
and man, it hit the spot. But I also got
me a yeah, I got me a couple of little pieces,
(33:24):
got me a free fry, I think. So the FBI
they had to work backwards with this thing. They're like, okay,
we can't we don't know the origin yet, but we
can find it out. Let's go ahead and look at
one of these guys. Let's go ahead and look at
this million dollar winter. This guy Michael Hoover. Now Michael Hoover.
(33:51):
He was a large, gregarious man in his sixties, very jovial,
easy to get along with a family. And when he
cashed in, he won a million dollars. And when you
sign for the million dollars, when you win, the caveat
(34:15):
to win in these big prizes is that the winners
agreed to permission for permission to use their name and
likeness in future promotions of this game. So you're gonna
get a million dollars. Yeah, I'll sign, I'll check the box,
I'll agree to the terms and conditions, whatever you say.
Just give me my check. Yep. So nobody's really reading that,
but they do.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Well.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Agent Doug Matthews came up with this wild idea. He
was like, Okay, we need to talk to Michael Hoover,
but we don't want to tip our hand and let
him know what we know. So since we have this
permission to use his name, of image and likeness, let's
(34:57):
go undercover. Let's pretend that we're a film crew and
let's go talk to this Hoover character and just pumping
with it. I mean, try to get as much information
as we can from this guy. Let's give you. He's like,
I'll be the director, You'll be the lighting guy. I
mean he had it all playing out in his mind,
just super overly excited and over anxious.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I'll be the interviewer.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, like a like a chihuahua. They had to calm
him down. And uh so what they did they were
they came up with this idea and they contacted one
of the marketing directors from McDonald's, a lady named Amy Murray. Amy.
She was like, okay. They were like, we want you
to go with us. You've got the product knowledge. You
you are the rep for McDonald's. You're gonna come in.
(35:42):
And he's like, I'm just gonna be like that, pretend
to be the hired hand in this this director for
this offshoot media company. And he even said, what what
are directors wear? And she was like, they look like
they come right off the golf course that was in
the documentary. And so he wore like this polo shirt
(36:02):
and slacks and out they were like pretending to swing
his golf. I was like, you he hammed it up.
He played it up, and it was it was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
You have to become the character in order.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yes, So they got in contact with Michael Hoover and
they went to Hoover's home. They said, hey, this is
such an interesting story. We're so happy for you. Congratulations
Amy Murray. She brought the big check that you see,
the big phony check on cardboard, and hey, here's what
(36:40):
we're giving to you, the million dollars. Let's get you
to talk a little bit about it. And so they
went on with like, tell us about the day you won,
tell us what happened. And of course Michael Hoover he
was more than happy to tell his story. Oh yeah,
he said, Well, I was relaxing on the beach, and
(37:01):
you know, I had fallen asleep and got some sand
on me, and I was out there. I had a
magazine I was reading and went out to wash the
sand off my legs, and I was he said, I
was kind of a klutz. He said, I dropped my
magazine in the in the ocean and it went away.
I never got a chance to read it. So he said,
(37:25):
after that, I packed up, I was headed home. I
had to stop by the local grocery store to get
some stuff before I went to the house, and uh,
there on the rack was the same People magazine I
dropped and I was like, yeah, you know, I was
really looking forward to reading that. I'll I'll just get
another copy. So that's he said. That's what he did,
(37:45):
and when he got home, it had the ad in
there for the McDonald's Monopoly game, and he pulled it
off and he was an instant winner. Oh yeah, a
million dollars, how about that? So that was his story
and by doing this, this is what the FBI was
trying to do, was to get his response. They wanted
(38:06):
to see what Michael Hoover would do, you know after
he told this story and they took uh this is
where kind of agent Matthews went rogue. They said, they
were like, well, you know what would be great. You know,
let's go out to the Let's go out to the
grocery store that you bought it from, and let's get
(38:29):
let's get a picture of you and a People magazine outside. Yeah,
let's do that. So they went out, they did that,
They got a got his picture out in front. He
was telling the story. They were like, what are you
gonna do? With the money and he said, oh, I'm
gonna buy a boat, and math Agent Matthews just played it.
He was like, cool man, what do you What kind
(38:49):
of boat are you gonna get? What are you gonna
name it? And he said, uh, oh, I'm gonna name
my boat ruthless scoundrel. And they were like, oh, that's
that's radman. Hell yeah, brother, and just playing it up,
just getting this guy more and more comfortable. And then
Agent Matthew said, Okay, we've been to the grocery store.
Let's go to the beach. Let's go to the beach
where you dropped your magazine initially, and let's let's get
(39:11):
your story again. Tell it again to us, and let's
get some shots of me panning around you and everything.
And he had the big, big cardboard check out there,
and this bro on the beach who'd had a little
too many he came up and he grabbed the check
and ran like this drunk guy on the beach. So
(39:34):
Agent Matthew's playing the director. He kicked it in the
high gear, went and tackled the guy on the beach.
He got the check back, and I mean, of course,
the check in real you can't take it to a
banking cash more. But he went. That happened, and that
was kind of the end of the day. And of
course Amy Murray, she was being dragged all over town.
(39:54):
She had her high heels on this executive for McDonald's
and she's like, what in the hell are we doing? Dude?
He was like, no, I just got to give him
say more stuff. The longer we can keep him talking,
the better we like.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
He's told his story fifteen times. What are you not understanding?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, So finally the FBI left under the ruse of
the production company and they wiretapped Michael Hoover's phone. They're like, okay,
let's see what he does now. You know, he was
so proud of his winnings and not long at all
(40:32):
after Agent Matthews and this undercover film crew left Michael
Hoover's house, he placed a phone call to a man
named Andrew glam Or AJ Glom and AJ Glom. He
had a colorful past. He was formally convicted of federal
(40:55):
drug trafficking charges. He'd serve some federal prison time, kind
of had a checker passed. I'll say, now, this guy,
he wasn't known to be a violent dude or anything
like that, or I don't want to say a victim
was crime w drugs are, but he he wasn't a killer,
(41:15):
cold blooded killer. He sold drug He did what he
did to make ends meet. Well, the phone call went
like this. Michael Hoover called him and he said, Andy,
me and Andrew Glomb. He said they were here, and
they believed everything the people magazine stuff. They believed all
(41:38):
of it. And the two laughed and laughed about how
they had gotten away with this thing. You know, they
were they were more than elated to say, hey, we
we we got we got away with this one. And
it was a very telling phone call that they were like, okay,
so this Andrew, this Aj Glomb, he's involved. Michael Hoover
(41:59):
obviously did not win this legitimately. And they joked on
the phone too. They said, Hoover said, hey, this you
know this. Domas asked me what I was gonna name
my boat, and I said, ruthless scoundrel. We got him,
you know, just saying this out loud on the phone.
(42:19):
So what this gave the FBI authorization to do was
to analyze the phone records from all the previous big
money winners what they did is set aside a four
month span on each of them from the date they won,
being in the middle, so two months beforehand, two months afterhand,
(42:41):
after after the fact. They're like, we gotta we got
to see who these people are in contact with. We
need to look at their outgoing calls, their incoming calls.
And sure enough, things slowly started to match up. And
we're gonna talk more about this right after we get
back from this short break, folks will be right back
(43:19):
and welcome back to Carolina Crimes, Episode two forty six,
Part one. And this wild story about the McDonald's monopoly
promotion scam a legend at this point, it's still under investigation. Well,
when we left off, we talked about the FBI. They said, Okay,
(43:41):
what we got to do is look at these winners.
We need to check out their phone records. We need
to see what matches up. You know, we got to
connect these dots. So when they started looking at these
numbers of all the previous big money winners, they found
some common.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Numbers heavy before the prize, heavy after the prize was awarded,
and then never before or never again.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So they're like, huh, one particular number stood out it
was one registered to a man named Jerome Jacobson or Jerry,
remember uncle Jerry, And so they decided to look into Hey,
(44:37):
who is this Jerome Jacobson character? What's his deal? So
Jerome Jacobson he grew up actually wanting to be an
FBI agent. In nineteen seventy seven, Jerry he had become
(44:57):
a police officer in Hollywood, Florida. In nineteen eighty one,
he married his first wife, Marsha. He became a stepfather
to his two sons. He was described as a very
meticulous man. He was a good cop, likable. One morning,
(45:20):
Jerry had trouble lifting his arm, whether it was a
shave or brush his teeth. There were a couple different
sources said some different things, and he kept having trouble
moving that arm throughout the day. He was not feeling
right and went to his doctor and was diagnosed with
(45:41):
Gilliam Bray syndrome. What Gilliam Bray syndrome is is it
can cause paralysis and loss of motor movements. It can
be very debilitating, it can cause death. So with this diagnose, unfortunately,
(46:02):
Jerry was forced to leave the police department. Jerry, his
wife Marcia, her children. They decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia,
not too awful far away. There Marcia could find some work.
She found work with a printing company, did printing, and
(46:23):
Jerry he was close to medical experts on Gilliam Beret
it's a neurological disease. He was close to a hospital
or a I'm sorry, a facility that specialized in treatment
of diseases like this. Now. His wife, Marcia, she was
(46:45):
interviewed on that documentary and she said, you know, I'd
give him fifteen minutes per day to be feel sorry
for himself, and then after that we went to work.
He did his pet, went to treatment and his mobility
was somewhat returned to normal. This is something that people
(47:08):
live with. Friend of mine, Amy On here in town,
she had about with this as well. Footballston, the former
center for the Dallas Cowboys, Travis Frederick, he suffered from
the same thing. But you can be able to live
your life somewhat normally. And Jerry Jacobson was just not
(47:31):
as a police officer. So in nineteen eighty two, Jerry
Jacobson he got a job working security for a company
there in Atlanta called Simon Marketing. Incorporated. They are the
(47:52):
same people that would eventually make make the game pieces
for mc donald's Monopoly promotion. Everyone there at Simon Marketing
they described Jerry as likable, very humble, generous. They talked
about how awesome of a cookie was. For all their
(48:12):
covered dishes, he would bring in ribs.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I was like, hell, wow, dips or something.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Tell us out with raisins in it, but yeah, or
something like that. But yeah, this guy would bring slabs
ribs and I mean no wonder. They considered him likable. Hell,
I'd like him too, sounds like my kind of guy. Well, Eventually,
Jerry climbed the ranks at Simon Simon Marketing, Incorporated, mostly
(48:42):
due to his work ethic He was. He was a
great security officer. He was very thorough, paid attention to everything.
He was we said meticulous before, but I mean to
a tea he had all his eyes dotted, all his
teas crossed. Well, let's talk about where he was performing
his security duties at, and that was, of course Simon Marketing.
(49:06):
The facility there was extremely secure. That was one of
the reasons McDonald's had gone with them any of their
promotional products that needed to be like for games or sweepstakes.
They got printed by Dittler Brothers, who was also who
(49:27):
Marcia worked for. Okay, now, Dittler Brothers, they were high
on the hall, very well respected in this industry. They
printed items such as lottery tickets. I never really thought
about that before. I was like, you know, they just
appear at the scratch offs. Where do you print these
things at?
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Yeah, like there's a place that does this.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah. They printed things like US postal stamps, and eventually
they printed the winning tokens for the monopoly promotion for McDonald's.
Those were extremely secure, especially the winning tokens. Everyone in
that building knew when those were being printed. Oh, they
(50:11):
were put into two vaults. Jerry is the head of
security now for Simon Marketing. He was present. He would
put them through the paces. They would do dealer printing.
They would go through drills. You know, they would recreate Okay,
this is what we're gonna do. Here's how I'm going
to open this. And he'd say, no, you know you
(50:32):
did something wrong right here. Now I know your code?
Start over again? Yeah again again. Yeah. He would do
that and the high level winners those tokens, they were
taken personally. Along with little seed what they called seeds.
(50:52):
So you had these winning tokens and you had like
twenty blanks with it, or twenty that were just not winners.
They would be taken two of companies in here here
there's a winner amongst these, put them at random on
boxes nobody knows, and they were personally taken most of
the time by Jerry Jacobson to these cup fry box manufacturers.
(51:18):
They were to be put on completely at random on
the packaging so there would be no foul play involved
the winners. If you pulled a winning token for these
monopoly promotions, they were mailed back to Simon Marketing. If
(51:40):
it was an alleged winner. They were all opened with
witnesses present, and the opening of these letters were or
these mailings were video recorded as well. So well, I mean,
you're talking about giving away a million.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
A lot of steps in the security.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Yeah, way more than I thought there would be. This
is interesting too. Each legit winning token it had on
it a pre planned error so they knew it was real.
Like say one of the letters was missing a portion.
They used Boardwalk for an example. In the documentary. They
(52:22):
said part of the k would be missing or a
chunk would be taken out so.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
That people couldn't like recreate or counterfeit them.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah. They also said that there was a code that
could only be seen with a black light on those
winning tokens as well, so they were doubly sure that
this was a legit winner. When it was mailed back
in or you know, those people would be notified a
yeah you he tried to. I don't know if any
(52:51):
criminal charges would come, but yeah, you tried to fake this.
This is not a legitimate when I'm sorry, sorry to
re regret to inform you that you did not win
a million.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
No, I think you knew that.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Well, there became another Jerry that was involved in this story,
and he actually was another larger than life character, a
man by the name of Jerry Colombo. He lived in Florida.
(53:25):
He was a native New Yorker with I don't know
how involved he was. People kind of skirted around this
in every story, but he allegedly had mob connections. Okay, Well,
Jerry Colombo. He won a large prize from the McDonald's
(53:49):
monopoly promotion. He won a Dodge Viper oh, which was hot. Yeah, boy,
back in the mid nineties, I remember one of my
first boss he had one. I was like, dude, you're
selling a lot of fish up here at the Mayflower
man to be driving that, and I just thought that
was the coolest thing ever. But yeah, old Jerry Columbo.
(54:09):
He won a Dodge Viper. He was involved. So at
this point, these wire taps, they weren't really getting investigators
anywhere besides the fact that they knew there were several
similar numbers. Jerry Colombo's number started popping up. They were like, okay,
(54:31):
so this guy that won the Dodge Viper. He was
even on a McDonald's commercial. He wanted to be an actor.
One of his family members said he was a combination.
I think it was his brother. He said he was
a combination, this Colombo of Tony Soprano and Rodney Dangerfield.
He was always a life of the party, always fun
to be around.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Wow, what a description.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, what a combo. And I was like, okay, oh,
this guy sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds
like somebody would have hung out with. I'm not gonna
be not gonna lie. So these wiretaps, they weren't hearing
any chatter. They weren't hearing anything, so they need to
take another angle. They need to shake this thing up
a little bit, meaning the FBI. They needed to get
(55:16):
these past winners talking. They needed to open the lines
of communication again. So Agent Doug Matthews, the same guy
that came up with the hey, let's pretend to film
these guys, he came forward and said, I got an idea.
Oh boy, let's shake some things up here. What we're
gonna do here in two thousand and one, we're gonna
(55:38):
go back to nineteen eighty seven, and what we're gonna
say is gonna happen is we're gonna have a reunion
of all past big money winners and we're gonna say, hey,
we're trying to promote this for McDonald's again. We need you.
What we're gonna do, We're gonna have a reunion, all
expense paid trip to Las Vegas. Oh, everybody, come on,
we're gonna have a big party. Read balloons. Ronald McDonald's
(56:01):
gonna be there. We're gonna we're gonna really make this
a big deal. Brother, And they said, you know, we're
gonna we're gonna film a little interview with each person
in Vegas. But to see tell us your story how
you won. And then they said, well, you know, why
don't we film you beforehand and we'll come to you. Well,
we'll make this happen and we'll see exactly how you won.
(56:24):
We want your story, we want to celebrate you. So
again he contacts old poor Amy Murray at oh gosh,
A McDonald's like, hey, we got another one. Let let's
do this.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Let's do and she was like, Okay, I'm gonna walk
and choose this time.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, let's see if we could do this thing. And
let's put this together and I'll start getting the names
together and we'll start contacting these people and see what happens.
And right there is where we're gonna leave off part
one of episode two forty six, and the FBI the
True try to get these people to talk more and
(57:02):
more and to figure out exactly how this occurred. And
even if they have the right uncle Jerry involved, is
it Jerry Colombo, is it Jerry Jacobson, is it somebody
they don't even know about that's doing these things. So
when we come back right after this with a part
(57:22):
two of this episode, we'll start getting into the nitty
gritty how this thing worked, how this came about and
all the other players involved. There's religious strip clubs in
next week's episode, Mafia ties, deaths, all kind lies I mean,
(57:43):
and more just braggadaccio while police work by Doug Matthews.
And we're gonna talk about that on the next episode,
Part two of episode two forty six. So until next time,
thank you for listening to Carolina Crimes.
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