Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

School is almost out, summer is almost here… for some people, the warm weather means focusing on your beach bod, and for others, it means the siren song of delicious treats. I’ll be the first to admit that a little ice cream cone or a french fry sure hits the spot on a beautiful summer day… but something that football coaches struggle with, like fast food restaurants, is maintaining order and discipline for the people they’re responsible for. Can’t have players running amok causing mayhem out in the open! (Well, unless you’re Phil Fulmer). Same with the people responsible for running some of your most successful marketing campaigns. If you can’t keep people in line, they’re going to burn you. That, folks, is the scammer’s time to shine. Let’s listen in to learn a little more about this week’s Hall of Fame Scammer…

JEROME JACOBSON: THE REAL-LIFE HAMBURGLAR

BORN: 1943

There’s hardly a person alive on this earth who’s never heard of McDonald’s, even if they choose not to eat there. For millions of kids across the planet, the Golden Arches symbolize the ultimate prize in special treats; with billions of dollars poured into marketing the ubiquitous Happy Meal over the decades, it’s no wonder that their burgers and fries have such staying power, even as fast food preferences rapidly evolve and shift in recent years. With McDonald’s being so adept at marketing, it’s no wonder that their Monopoly competition, which started in 1987, continues to be one of the biggest draws of any fast food promotion, anywhere, in any restaurant. While Monopoly has not run since 2015 in the United States, it continues to live on in many other countries, most notably in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and many prominent Western European countries.

What is important to note about McDonald’s Monopoly, however, is that in most countries, companies are actually not permitted to run their own contests in order to maintain a greater degree of impartiality and fraud prevention. McDonald’s actually had a contractual agreement with Simon Marketing,Inc., a promotion company, to handle running the Monopoly game in North America during the early years of the promotion. This important detail is where our story begins today.

In 1989, Jerome Jacobson was the chief security officer at Simon Marketing. He was the guy responsible for delivering the winning game tokens to various McDonald’s locations across the United States, which involved a lot of domestic flights. Early on in the contest’s inception, many McDonald’s executives insisted that randomized draws for major prizes often get re-run so that winning game pieces would end up in American locations rather than Canadian ones – and for whatever reason, this apparently rankled Jacobson quite a bit (stranger still, since he does not display any apparent connections to Canada whatsoever). As such, he took it upon himself to personally fix this issue – but instead of rearranging winning game pieces, he instead chose to steal them and sell them himself. Thanks to a roll of anti-tamper seals mistakenly sent to him by a supplier, Jacobson was able to carefully remove the grand prizes and switch them out. Before each flight, he’d sneak into an airport bathroom with the briefcase, out of sight of his handler (a McDonald’s corporate accountant),  and replace the winning pieces with others, sight unseen.

Now possessing the winning pieces, he sold them – at great profit – to others. Between 1995 and 2000, he assembled a vast network of co-conspirators, who were able to track down willing buyers for him. At first, it was mostly just Jerry’s immediate family and friends… but by the middle of the decade, he’d managed to get Gennaro “Jerry” Colombo, of the famed Colombo crime family, to purchase the winning token that got him a Dodge Viper (although he actually took a cash prize instead because he was too fat to fit in the car). Colombo even appeared in a commercial celebrating the win.

With Colombo’s help, Jacobson was able to vastly expand his network of buyers across the country; in total, his crime ring scammed McDonald’s out of over $24 million in cash and prizes. Things were looking incredible – until, one day, they weren’t.

In 2001, the FBI office in Jacksonville, Florida got a call from a mysterious informant; someone named “Uncle Jerry” had been rigging the McDonald’s Monopoly games… for years. As it turns out, it was almost certainly Jerry Colombo’s mother ratting out the ring of scammers… sadly, her son had died in a car crash three years prior, and her daughter-in-law Robin had just been sent to prison for grand theft auto. By tipping off the feds, she hoped to keep custody of her grandson, Francesco – born to Jerry and Robin. (Robin’s father and brother had also managed to “win” McDonald’s grand prizes of $1 million in cash, which was unquestionably due to their family connections.)

McDonald’s was beyond pissed when the FBI revealed the game was compromised – but they did run their promotion one more time in 2001 to help try and track down the culprits. When investigators realized that a disproportionate number of winners over the decade had come from Georgia (where Jacobson lived) and from the Jacksonville area (where he had worked as a cop prior to joining Simon Marketing), they managed to triangulate the home addresses of a number of winners to within a few miles of Jacobson’s lake house in Duval County, Florida. On August 22nd, Jacobson and eight others were arrested, and Jacobson was charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. In all, 53 people were indicted in the scam – and 48 of those charged pled guilty.

Jerry Jacobson got 37 months in prison for his crimes, and was ordered to pay $12.5 million in restitution; he was released on October 21st, 2005. He now lives outside of Atlanta with his seventh wife – yes, you heard me correctly – and despite being in poor health, is still kicking at age 77.

If you want to learn more about the scam, definitely check out the miniseries McMillions, produced by HBO. (Mahhky-Mahk is an executive producer on the series, so you already know it’s gonna be entertaining.)

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Apparently not a single one of the million-dollar prize winners from 1995-2000 won the contest cleanly. I can say the exact same about my tenure in the NFL! Remember – it’s not about how others lost – it’s all about the fact that you won. Take each and every success, and savor them for all they’re worth – because the next one may not come along for a while. But that’s ok – patience is a virtue. Until next time – I’m Hue Jackson.

Information from this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.