For Jacobson, who reportedly earned about $70,000 a year, the temptation to siphon off the winning pieces seemingly became too strong. McDonald's ran multiple Monopoly game promotions in the late-1980s and early-1990s, but in 1995 the fast-food giant ramped up the stakes and prizes ballooned from thousands of dollars to a grand prize of $1 million. She followed Jacobson wherever he carried the game pieces, double-checking that the winning McDonald's game pieces never left their tamper-proof case. He would take the stickers to packaging centers around the country where he would apply them himself to french fry cartons and soda cups bound for McDonald's locations previously selected by a random computer drawing, according to The Daily Beast, which viewed sealed court documents from Jacobson's case.Įven though he was the head of security, Jacobson was also under constant surveillance by an independent auditor, The Daily Beast noted. Securing the game pieces often meant Jacobson had to personally carry them in a case shut with a tamper-proof seal. But in the mid-90s, Jacobson figured out a way to rig the popular game so that the most lucrative winning game pieces would almost always find their way to people he knew - people who then shared millions of dollars in winnings with him, according to federal officials who announced the arrests of Jacobson and seven of his associates in 2001.
It was Jacobson's job to look after game pieces for McDonald's promotional events, making sure no employees pocketed any of the prizes themselves. In the 1990s, Simon made the game pieces used in McDonald's promotional contests, including the Monopoly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire games, where customers could win up to $1 million in prizes just by buying items like french fries or a soda. Jacobson, also known as "Uncle Jerry," was once director of security for Simon Marketing.
0 kommentar(er)
