So he gave it to his stepbrother, Marvin Braun, and struck a deal: Braun would turn it in and they would quietly split the money. One day, in 1989, Jacobson pocketed a prize piece for $25,000 and replaced it with a dud.īut, of course, he wasn’t eligible to cash it in himself. Part of his job was to deliver the high-ticket tokens - for cash prizes up to $1 million - to a factory where they were affixed to food packaging. Jacobson was an ex-cop-turned-security guard who worked for Los Angeles-based Simon Marketing, which oversaw the contest behind the scenes. In fact, some 50 people would be convicted for cheating.īlame a man named “Uncle” Jerry Jacobson, who orchestrated a fraud that ran for 12 years and scammed some $24 million from the Monopoly promotion. “It seemed like an opportunity for ordinary people to get ahead, but there were consequences,” said Brian Lazarte, co-director of the HBO docu-series “McMillion$,” premiering Monday, about the contest. People went wild for it and business spiked by 40 percent for the fast-food giant, which kept it up for years. Customers would purchase sandwiches, fries, drinks, etc., that included peel-off game pieces on the packaging - potentially rewarding them with anything from a Filet-O-Fish to a new car to $1 million. In 1987, McDonald’s launched an ingenious sweepstakes based on the game of Monopoly. McDonald's stock jumps as Grimace's purple milkshake boosts sales McDonald's to debut spinoff fast-food chain CosMc's next year

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