All language subtitles for McMillions - 01x05 - Episode 5.WEB-XLF.English.C.orig.Addic7ed.com

My name is Jared Jacobson,
and my father is Jerry Jerome Jacobson.

Come here, boys. Come here.
Bailey, come here.

I grew up in Miami. Once my mom got
divorced from him, he cut all ties.

I was three years old
when they got divorced.

So this is a picture of me as a baby
with my dad and my mom's dad.

My mom called him and requested for
back child support when I was 13,

and that's when he popped on the radar.

That's when I really met him
for the first time.

During the summer, I would go
fly up to Atlanta and spend

three or four weeks up there with him,
getting to know him a little bit.

I believe he was living with Alison.

This is a picture of the wedding party
when my dad and Linda got married.

That's my mom in the picture
with me and him.

I think it's one of the only pictures
I had with the three of us together.

My mom is Carol Cody.

Do you remember if she was
the first wife? Second wife?

I was his third marriage.
Really, I was his fourth.

Out of I think we counted seven.

Wait a minute. Phyllis, Carol,

Daryl, me,

Alison, and Linda.
He's been married six times.

If he was married with that marriage
license down in Miami, it's seven.

The first time I got the text about
the possibility of a documentary series

within two minutes,
I got a phone call saying,

"Hey, if anybody calls or talks to you

or wants to talk about this thing,
don't do it."

I'm not gonna call him and ask
permission to do this with you, guys.

I think this is my way of...

Having maybe a little bit of closure.

This is definitely gonna put the nail
in the coffin for our relationship.

And you know what?
I'm okay with it.

MCMILLIONS

I tried to keep my mouth shut
but it didn't work.

I knew that I had to do something.
She was gonna run with the money.

So, the FBI said you threatened
to kill her.

- Did you talk to your wife about it?
- No. I didn't threaten to kill her.

I just told my wife,
"We can't do this in the airport."

I meant we can't confront her
in the airport.

I didn't mean anything other than
we cannot confront her in the airport.

Turned out to be a misunderstanding,
but you still have to run it out

to make sure.

The long and short of it is
it wasn't a valid threat.

Right after that, my wife took her
sister to the bank to cash the check

and was attached at the hips

with her until she did the right thing
with the money. Yeah.

So after that airport drama we started
to focus on Dwight even more.

So were up on these wiretaps.

And Rick and I hear something's
happening with Uncle Jerry.

A phone call was intercepted between
Jacobson and Dwight Baker.

The conversation was that
Jacobson and Dwight

were going to meet
for the exchange of a winning piece.

That exchange was going to happen
somewhere in Georgia.

They say on the phone, "I'll be there
in an hour and fifteen minutes,"

or something like that.
We had that window.

They didn't name the place where they
were gonna meet but they gave hints.

The usual place.

- You mean along the highway?
- Yeah. Along the highway.

So we hurried up, we got on the maps,

and we figured out that it was
somewhere along 85 near Atlanta.

We had a certain area, but we didn't
know. We thought but we weren't sure.

So I got on the phone with Atlanta
to tell them,

"Hey, this is what's coming up."
So they were cued up and ready.

They mobilized quick.

They had to get there and get visual.

Then we had air support, surveillance
group down in their cars.

We're looking at rest areas, places
on the side of the road, everywhere.

It was on.

I remember looking at this golf resort
north of Atlanta.

It's got to be this place. Seems to be
about halfway. It's got to be.

Where would you guys meet?
Would you go to his house?

We met at his house one time,
Chateau Elan,

a winery between here and there.
It's halfway.

FBI surveillance
Chateau Elan

Sometimes we'd eat, or we'd sat in the
car and trade and trade money.

Yeah.

We had an FBI pilot up in the air,

and could see Mr. Jacobson handing
Mr. Baker something in a folder.

And there it was.
And off they go.

The video evidence speaks volumes
of the illegal acts they were doing.

It's pretty short but sweet.

We got you now.

It was about the end of the summer,
and the game is ending.

We weren't gonna have another game.
We already have identified Jerry.

We had identified Mr. Baker in fair
play. We had identified Mr. Glomb.

We had identified and videoed
Mr. Hoover.

And we had several others.

Devereaux is good. He's laying out
the indictment, the arrest warrants.

We're gonna take this through
the grand jury, get the true bills

which is the indictment, and we're
gonna go out and effect these arrests.

In this case, the charges were
conspiracy and mail fraud.

If you use the United States mail

in furtherance of a scheme and artifice
to defraud,

that's penalized by up to 20 years
in prison.

The initial stage was the indictment of
the first eight.

So the first thing that was gonna make
the news, and alert all the winners

that, "Hey, the gig is over,"
was the end of August, August 21st.

Everybody was spread
across the country,

and so we ended up having to request
the assistance of numerous offices

spread entirely
across the United States.

You have to provide those agents
enough information to make arrests.

So in anticipation of the takedown,

we had prepared a very, very lengthy
communication.

So it's our whole plan. It's
the background of the investigation.

This communication was probably
20 or 30 pages long.

Very, very specific, in-depth.
Puts you right there. Everything.

We faxed it. And I'm not going to say
who did it. I'll say I didn't, but

there may have been somebody I know
closely that did it that would deny it.

Doesn't matter who it was, but...

On the speed dial,
which I never use speed dial...

The agents sending that plan thought
the speed dial and faxed Greenville FBI

when in fact it said
The Greenville News.

It ended up being probably the worst
person in the world, a news agency.

This is a big issue now, right?
Like all the stuff's out there.

Now, you got people that might be
waiting on agents to come arrest them.

It's bad, bad, bad.

Rick Dent's big head was sweating bad.
Devereaux was sweating it.

Chris Graham was losing weight
over that.

I remember being really, really angry
about it.

How in the world, you know?
How could this happen?

Now it's, "How do we fix it? How do we
keep them from going with the story?"

After all this work,
this could really screw things up.

My name is John Boyanoski.
In 2001,

I was a reporter
for The Greenville News.

I've been there six or seven months.
I was the crime and court's reporter.

So anything bad happened,
anything that had

an official-looking document that came
across the fax, would come to my desk.

I came down Monday morning, and there
was a stapled thing on my chair.

And I picked it up and I saw FBI on it.

Three paragraphs in, I'm thinking,
"This doesn't sound right."

This is an open investigation. You're
talking about surveillance in here.

I thought, "It's the background, no,
they're..." I started flipping through,

and it's all surveillance stuff
and background information.

"I don't think this is supposed to be
going to Boyanoski and The Greenville."

I remember I turned around my chair
and I got my boss. I'm like, "Dave,

did you look at this? Where did this
come from?" I looked at him like,

"Dave, I think we have
an open FBI investigation."

He's like, "What?" When he start
looking at it, his eyes go like this.

I'm 24 years old.

I'm trying to make a name for myself,
and I wanna write a story. I'm like,

"Yeah," you know? Exclusive.

McDonald's investigation.
FBI are looking into a big fraud case.

So Mark Devereaux's first response was

just jump in the bureau plane
and slide down to South Carolina.

Each office surveillance squad has
usually a Cessna 160 or something.

If you're ever in a Volkswagen bug
in the early '70s,

it's like a lawnmower in the sky.

I'm looking at that going, "No way in
hell I wanna be a part of that again."

Devereaux being in that controlled-ass
environment with him and a Tide bottle,

that's the only way you got to pee,
can you imagine that?

That's an awful situation to be in.

Literally, we get in a plane, fly from
Jacksonville to South Carolina

to do our best to ensure that

faux pas didn't cause
a significant embarrassment.

That plane sucked.

I can tell you, at that point in time,

that news agency had no requirement
to keep it quiet.

We did beg, plead asking them
if they would be kind enough

basically to keep that to themselves.

There was a little bit of,
"What are we gonna get for it?"

Can't say we bribed them, but I will
say that we gave them an opportunity

to be able to take a photograph
possibly

following the arrest
in connection with the investigation.

Their thing was, "If you could just
give us the exclusive."

It was something, at least,
to sweeten the deal

and thank them for covering up the
mistake that Special Agent Mathews,

I didn't say that, may have made.

So I wanna say, now that I'm saying it
and remembering all this,

it was not me that faxed that freaking
thing over. It was somebody else.

I can promise you
every time I'd use a fax machine,

I check it not once, not twice,
but at least three times.

If anybody ever knew how close this was
just to blowing up,

I know that those subjects
who may see this, would go,

"Damn it. How did that not happen?"
Too bad, right? It didn't.

We were the good guys. It always works
better for the good guys.

We always find a way. Which is what
I'm saying happened there.

The night before
Attorney General Ashcroft

gave us the go-ahead
to take the action.

Day of the takedown,
it's a very early morning.

5:00 in the morning, you're getting up
and making sure everybody's ready.

Regardless of whether you believe
that person is violent or not,

you still have to be very careful
as to your tactical approach

anytime that you engage in the arrest
of an individual because

you're taking away their liberties
and they pretty much know that.

The arrests were scheduled to
all go down at the same time

so that there won't be conversation.

And Jacksonville sent agents
to each location,

so that somebody that's familiar
with the case will be able to be there

to help with the arrest.

My role that day, as the supervisor
on the squad in the command post

was really kind of coordinating. And if
there was problems out in the field,

any decision about how to handle it
is gonna come through me.

I was in charge of the arrest
of Brenda Phenis in Indiana.

I had to take down Dwight Baker.

My duty on takedown day
was Gloria Brown here at Jacksonville.

I sit in the FBI's office, we can hear
them, "We're making the move now."

It sounded like a mid-90s
Michael Bay kind of thing.

You're hearing, "Go, go, go."

So I got Glomb.

By far the nastier,

more potential danger
of anybody else.

And then, you know me, it's always
a contest with no matter what.

So I'm gonna get my guy
before anybody else.

My guy, Glomb, was behind a fortress.

A legitimate, big-time cameras
everywhere, big gates.

Chances are he won't open the gate.
At the same time, I wanna be first.

So we had to find a way to get Glomb
to come out.

The thing we came up with was
he has to come out and get his paper.

So that gate opens up, who do you think
walks out and gets the paper?

The wife, right? Not him.

So I'm going, "Oh, God. I'm gonna ram
this car through the front gate."

I have got ready, just getting ready
to leave the house, and

I see somebody walking by the kitchen
window. I look out the door, see FBI.

They haven't knocked on the door yet.

So I ran upstairs, tell my wife,
I said, "The FBI is out front."

So when they knocked on the door,
it was Astralaga.

We show him the arrest warrant.

We gained access to the property
and he is taken into custody.

In the command post, we kept hearing,

"So and so has been arrested. So and so
confessed. Can't find this person.

So and so is arrested.
They're denying everything."

And so Rick Dent went to Atlanta
to get Uncle Jerry.

Jerry Jacobson.

The arrest of Jerry was
in early morning in his house.

Knock, knock, knock.
"The FBI. Open up."

I remember Jerry initially,

doing what you would expect a former
police officer to do was clam up.

You know, he realized
his goose was cooked, so to speak.

Eventually he received his jewelry,
silver handcuffs.

At Jerry Jacobson's arrest, he had some
Honda sports car thing

that he was riding around in
that we seized.

And just cash in a trash bag, in the
trunk of his car. Who does that shit?

Who carries that crap around?
Really?

My first interaction with Jerry
Jacobson was at the federal courthouse

in Atlanta.

And I was in Atlanta because Jerry
Jacobson was the head of the snake,

and I wanted to personally advise him
of the charges against him.

Sources say that the FBI will announce
that it has made arrests

in an alleged scheme to defraud
the McDonald's Corporation

by rigging its recent Monopoly game.

Now, the FBI would only say that it has
scheduled a news conference

for 2:15 this afternoon

but sources tell CNN seven of the eight
people are in custody.

Sources say the eighth was indicted,
not arrested yet. Still being sought.

I lay it out, "I'm gonna be the first."
I was the last.

The last one to get their guy.

So we needed to draw Glomb out.

And then I came up with
what I thought was a great idea.

Broward County Sheriff
comes to the gate and says,

"Do you guys mind coming down here
and identifying these guys?

They were robbing a house here,
and I want you to identify them."

I said, "I don't care."
They had bothered me.

He said
it'll only take a couple of minutes.

I say okay. And then I went outside.

And, of course, they grabbed me
outside, and he says,

"You're under arrest for mail fraud."

I said, "Mail fraud? What's that?"

He says, "On the McDonald's."
I said, "Oh, okay."

Didn't have a clue that they were on
to this case. Nothing.

He didn't say nothing else. I say,
"Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

Mathews was one of the original people
who arrested me.

Had some snippets of the phone calls
to let him know we had what we had.

He decided not to cooperate.
One of the very few.

I remember we were arguing in the car.

He said, "You think you're some
gangster or something?"

I said, "Yeah.
And you think you're Don Johnson?"

You know, from Miami Vice.

At the end, he was okay. In the front,
he was a little bit of an asshole.

- You did offer him a cup of coffee.
- I did. I'm that way.

I'm very friendly.

It wasn't just the takedown,

there were a number of people on
the initial indictment that we charged.

On top of that,

I needed to have agents going out to
interview all these other winners.

What we didn't wanna happen

was somebody who is a "winner"
to be sitting at home

and see this takedown, and then have
two or three weeks to think about it.

Think about what they're gonna say.

Or worse yet, hop on a plane
and move to South America.

If you played the popular
McDonald's Monopoly game

and thought you'd never win
the top price, you may have been right.

In Washington, the Attorney General
and FBI announced eight people

were arrested for defrauding
McDonald's and its customers.

My work said to me,
"The FBI's looking for you."

I'm like, "What?

Shit. This is the FBI."

My friends were from Louisiana,
from the swamp, they go,

"We wanna hide you out in the bayou."

But then they were like, "You can never
contact anybody anymore."

Just like in TV script.
You can't talk to anybody.

"Oh, hell no. I can't do that."

And, finally, they caught up with me.
They finally found me at home.

They were very nice to me, they were
just straight to the point,

and they got what they wanted
to hear from me.

I decided I was gonna be the one to

go down the street
and interview Buddy Fisher.

He was a little surprised,

but didn't try to tell us anything
other than what really happened.

Nice guy.

So through the course of the interview
I had with Dwight Baker,

he implicated George Chandler,
his foster son in the scheme.

At that point, we made a determination
to reach out to George Chandler

and talk to him
about his involvement.

I was on I-20 and my cell phone rang.

My secretary came on the phone
and said,

"George, there's two guys
in the office here

from the FBI
who would like to speak to you."

"Put them on the phone."

Who don't wanna talk to the FBI?
So this guy

comes on the phone, and his name is
Special Agent Astralaga.

And he said,
"Mr. Chandler,

we've arrested this morning
Dwight and Linda Baker

for their involvement in the McDonald's
Monopoly games scam,

and we would like to speak to you
about your involvement."

And the first thing out of my mouth
was,

"If you've arrested Dwight and Linda
Baker, you've got the wrong people."

For some reason, I was home that day,
and

my sister called me.

I picked up the phone, called her and
said, "Are you watching television?"

She said no.
And I said, "Well, turn it on."

William Fisher and Gloria Brown
both live in Jacksonville.

Prosecutors say the plot was...

And there was my name on the screen,

Gloria Brown indicted.

I just folded up
in the kitchen by myself.

Again, there I was alone.
I'm like, "Okay."

Before I can get to even listen to what
was on the television about me,

my doorbell rang.

Opened the door,
and there was this detective there.

I'm like, "Oh, my God."

She was denying being involved
in anything.

I sped up to the fact of, "We're not
talking about what you did or not.

We're just talking about how much time
in prison you're gonna serve.

You might wanna go ahead
and start cooperating now."

And I had decided this time the lie's
gonna be over and I just told them.

There was no need for me
to lie anymore.

She basically told us what we needed to
know, and we already knew again,

because we knew the scheme, the
recruiting formula, how it happened.

I saw her shoulders sink a little bit.

I'm saying to myself,

"Do I need a lawyer first?"
That's the kind of stuff.

"Am I doing the right thing?"
I just didn't know what to do.

I never thought about
what to do once I got caught.

And I was not sure if they was gonna
take me with them.

I was waiting on a police car
to pull up out front.

When they walked to the door
I walked to the door with them.

When they say that,
"We'll be getting back with you,"

I was so happy right in that moment.

I said, "At least that way I get a
chance to make some arrangements."

The deal was if they didn't cooperate,
we're gonna arrest,

if they did cooperate, we're gonna take
their statement

and then go ahead and document it,
and they refer to the case agent

who would then take it
to the federal prosecutor.

I was almost done with my prison time
for doing the fraud that I did.

And I see there's two tall gentlemen
in seats.

They said, "We're here
for the McDonald's Monopoly,"

and they had this poster laid out.
And Uncle Jerry was the middle bubble.

They had all these bubbles all around.
And then they had this-sized bubbles.

And I was that-sized bubble
connected to him.

And it was,
"Jerry Colombo, deceased."

There's my picture,
"Robin Colombo, incarcerated."

And I'm looking over it and I go,
"Hmm, okay."

I said, "Tell you what, give me your
card and if I can think of anything,

I will get in touch with you,
how about that?"

And they said, "No, that's not
how that works, Mrs. Colombo."

I said, "That's how this is gonna work
right now."

I said, "Let me tell you something,
I have a little boy out there

and a daughter, and you don't know
who you're messing with,

and I'm not gonna put their lives
in jeopardy."

I got the card. They go to leave.
And I'm going to leave.

I'm thinking, "Okay." I'm going back
down to the girl's part, right?

Well, here come the officers
from the prison.

They go, "Colombo, come back up here."

They went to shackle me and I'm like,
"Wait, what are you doing?" They said,

"Your custody level has changed now
because you're under investigation."

I said, "No, I'm not."
I said, "So, whatever this is all?"

They said, "Yeah." I said, "Hold this,"
"No, Mrs. Colombo." I said,

"Leave me alone, I'm calling the Feds."

I ran to the double doors
and I kicked the double door open.

I said, "Hey, come here."

They said, "Oh, you wanna talk?"
I said, "Yeah." "Come on, come on."

"Hey, Mike, can I have some coffee?
Can we have coffee?

I think they want coffee."

I said, "You really know
more than I do, honestly."

And of course, they're like,
"Well, why don't you humor us?"

I said, "Well, let's do this,
I need a cigarette,

so let's take a cigarette right now,
let's take them out of here.

"You really got to smoke that?" "I
really do. You got my nerves racked."

As a matter of fact, I need one now,
talking about it.

"You really should quit those things,"
I said, "Yeah, today's not the day."

6:00 came and they took me in
where the TV room was.

John Ashcroft came on television
and my knees got weak and whatever.

This morning the agents of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation arrested

eight individuals in several states

for their involvement
in a nationwide scheme

to defraud McDonald's Corporation
and its customers,

by fraudulently manipulating
McDonald's promotional prize contests.

We want those involved in this type
of corruption to know

that breaking the law is not a game.

That day everything went really,
literally, according to plan.

It made for a very fun interesting day
and one I'll never forget.

I wanna commend the fine work of the
FBI and the Jacksonville division

of the United States Attorney's Office
for the Middle District of Florida.

Everyone involved in this investigation
worked hard to break this conspiracy.

How do we miss this? There are seven
winners in the 864 area code

the last four years, how do never put
two and two together ourselves

if they kept coming
from the same darn area?

And we've done stories, big stories
on two or three other winners,

the million-dollar winners, too,
and we had never put it together.

That's one of things where there's
a kick on ourselves and for journalism.

"We never put that one together."
There's a bit of egg on our face.

Well, this story is going to make
a lot of people angry.

Prosecutors say it appears
McDonald's customers

never really had a chance to win
the biggest prizes.

Frankly the odds of your winning that
million-dollar jackpot in McDonald's

weren't that good to begin with.

The FBI said the odds were really about
one in zero.

They need to serve time for that,
definitely.

Many of the winners were from the same
family or were closely related.

At the center of the fraud ring
prosecutors say Jerome Jacobson

assigned to place the winning
big cash game pieces into circulation.

Instead the FBI says he stole them.

Passing winning game pieces
to his friends,

who then recruited others to come
forward and claim the big prizes.

Jacobson was given a Go to Jail card
for keeping the winning tickets.

And since the FBI today,

they had a confidential informant
who tipped them off at first.

Someone who had knowledge
of the scheme.

McDonald's was devastated
by the news,

while a stunned spokesperson for Parker
Brothers had only this reaction.

We want you to have the opportunity
to see who Mr. Jacobs is.

He's 58 years old and he's married
and has a family.

He knows the seriousness
of these charges

and he also knows that he faces

very serious potential punishment in
prison if convicted of these charges.

We know many of you have attempted to
contact him,

his wife, and his family,
and have been in his neighborhood.

We are asking you

to allow there
to be some privacy for his family

and for his neighbors.

Jerry Jacobson had retained council
fairly quickly,

an attorney by the name of Ed Garland.

And so my involvement was then
talking to the attorney.

Once he has retained council,
I have instructed him

that I should analyze the case before
he speaks further with the government.

Are you gonna share your motto?

We follow the motto, "A fish wouldn't
get caught if he kept his mouth shut."

That's what a defendant needs to know.
Stop the music,

stand behind us, we do the fighting
and the talking for you.

We're saying that you have a rogue
employee that embezzles a piece,

steals it, bottom line.

It was pretty clear that
Mark was coming full force.

The first conversation was
plead straight up to the indictment

and bring every penny you have
and your wife has.

The threats of "I will take everything
down to her engagement ring."

Mark is a very effective lawyer,
a very talented lawyer

and uses his power
in a very assertive way

on behalf of his client,
the United States.

Ed and I had many cases together
and he's a very experienced attorney.

But I've told him that the chances
for Mr. Jacobson to go to trial

and come out without a conviction
was zero.

When you deal with a lawyer like that
you've got let him know

you're unintimidated
and unintimidatable.

So it became tense and confrontational
immediately.

Mr. Jacobs will not be making
any statements about this case

until he appears in court.

That was a very interesting day.
I turn on CNN headline news,

boom, picture of my dad.

And it was like,
"Wow."

In the back of my mind, I was like,
"I knew it.

Mom and I always knew there was
something wrong and here it is.

Right here in front of us now,
right here on TV."

It's not a surprise. He was good at
manipulating people, he was good at it.

But that's my dad.

I guess I was always questioning
the legitimacy of everything.

There was always something new,
it was always trips, and it was always

spending things extravagantly
it seemed like to me.

My mom and I always joked that

we always thought there was something
not right about him.

I knew he kept secrets from me. Ask me
no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

And that's how I dealt with him.

If I didn't ask him any questions,
he didn't have to lie to me.

For instance,
he said that he had this swampland.

He might go out and buy me something
and I would say, "Jerry,

that's a lot of money." He would go,
"I sold a piece of swampland."

Jerry was always trying to figure the
easy way. How do you get a free lunch?

The moral of the story is
there are no free lunches.

But there may be some brownies
hidden somewhere.

Does that make any sense?

Mr. Jacobson was not helping us,
and so the question was still ongoing.

How did he get the game pieces?
We know he did, but how did he do it?

We didn't know if Dittler Brothers
was involved.

There was no details to anything.

We don't know if it's just Jerry, we
don't know if it's everybody in there.

I was furious Jerry did what he did,
he put all of those people at risk.

And we took a trip
and actually went to Dittler Brothers

because there might be
somebody there inside.

When the FBI came in
and shut everything down

and started gathering their evidence...
Somebody came by and said,

"The FBI's here. You got to make sure
that you don't go anywhere near there."

Somebody's in trouble.

Somebody's in trouble, but what effect
this is gonna have? Don't know.

Well, Roger, first let me underscore
the fact that Jerome Jacobson

was not a McDonald's employee. He was
in fact an employee of Simon Marketing,

which was the firm that McDonald's
had contracted to administer its games.

McDonald's says tonight it's fired the
Georgia company that ran the contests

and now the FBI is investigating

how many other instant winners
weren't so instant after all.

The deception by Simon Marketing
was unacceptable.

We really trusted them
to run the game for us.

We had to end the relationship to gain
the trust back with our customers.

Pretty much, I had to say McDonald's
was 98% of our business.

The FBI showed up one day
at the front door and shut us down.

When the information came out,
their stock went from

approximately a hundred dollars
to basically fifty cents.

God, these are bad.

It was the largest one day drop
on the American Stock Exchange.

Ensuring that these games are secure,
that is how they make their living.

Two days after McDonald's fired Simon
Marketing from all future promotions,

a second major company
has also pulled the plug.

A couple of days later, Kraft came out
and cancelled their contract.

There's nothing left.

So in effect, the Chicago, LA, Atlanta
offices here in the States,

we had an office in London, Paris,
Hong Kong

and several manufacturing facilities
in China.

The people at Simon Marketing were
good people, they were professional,

we really loved working with them.
So, it was devastating

when one bad apple
wrecked the lives of so many people.

They're gone, man, they're gone.

We spent one night in jail.

For my bail, they asked for
a million dollars. The judge said,

"For this, you want
a million dollars?" He said 200,000.

The Lord blessed me
in the past situation.

I had three lots that
were free and clear.

The tax value was exactly two hundred
thousand of those three lots.

So, that was just a miracle.

These three lots here,
the lake is over on this side

but these three lots here are the three
lots that I put up as collateral

for my property bond.

I understood at that time something
was amiss with Dwight's story.

And I immediately called Dwight, and

I remember being incredulous with him.

Who was the guy that was going through
the divorce,

where did you get his ticket?
What's going on?

He said, "George,
I can't talk about it right now.

Don't worry, you don't have anything
to worry about.

You didn't do anything wrong.
It was me."

And I wasn't gravely concerned
about it.

The thing that surprised me is
they gave me bond.

They never should have gave me bond.

I'm telling you, I was a fugitive back
in the '80s. So, I was a mistake.

I'm home about two days, there's
two guys at the gate with suits on.

I said, "They came back for me.
That's the marshals coming to get me."

Here's Jehovah Witnesses.

I was never so happy to talk to
a Jehovah Witness in my life.

I was in my maternity shop
in Coral Gables. We have a TV there.

And they broke in the news that the
McDonald's thing had just been busted.

I was fucking floored, fucking floored.

Two seconds later two FBI agents
walked in my store,

Doug Mathews and Rick Dent,

and they said they'd like to talk to me
about the McDonald's case.

I knew I was fucked.

I knew I was fucked.

I'll be honest with you, I don't know
if Jerry turned me in or not.

Right after it happened
I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, I said,

"Jerry,
how the fuck could you do this?"

And he says, "How the fuck,
I thought we were done."

I was really pissed because
I had thought that night we were done.

I had hired a local attorney to go with
me to the meeting with the FBI.

And he called me and said,
"George, you've been indicted."

I was in shock.

You don't know how to react because
you're charged with a federal crime.

My name appears
in a text of major newspapers

and on major television stations
all across the nation.

Friends are calling me,
family's calling me,

business acquaintances are calling me,
customers are calling me,

employees are calling me.

I didn't know what to tell him.

I didn't know what to tell my son
who's eight years old at the time.

Every kid in the school has a question
for our son,

and I don't know how to help him.

It was... devastating.

George was...

very angry, upset, hurt.

But I tried to explain to him

that I did everything in my power
to protect him from this.

At some point in time, though,
and it was in fairly short order

you snap out, I snapped out of it
and I took action.

I went down to Jacksonville
and started making phone calls

looking for what I termed
the best criminal lawyer in town.

I'm Curtis Scott Fallgatter,
I'm an attorney.

I've been an attorney
for about 40 years.

I was a federal prosecutor here in town
for 17 years

and I've been on private practice for
20 years. I was blessed to have been

selected one of the top criminal
defense attorneys in Northeast Florida

or the last couple of decades.

In 2001 I met George Chandler,
he was 29 years old.

Ninth grade education,
but he's a brilliant young man.

I was very impressed with his candor

and he explained how he had been
hoodwinked by his foster father,

which of course demonstrates
his innocence.

I thought, "Well, we can probably make
this case go away pretty easily."

So I picked up the phone
and called Mr. Devereaux.

Mr. Fallgatter interviewed me
in January of 1989

when I got hired in this office.

He's been to my house many times,
I've been to his house many times.

At one point in time we were
very sociable. Not so much anymore.

I'd explained to him how George
had been hoodwinked,

did not know the tickets
have been stolen or embezzled,

and Mr. Devereaux's response was,

"If I had dropped Mr. Chandelier's case
I'd have to drop several others."

I was the first person
to turn themselves in.

I mean, they had me.

I was scared as shit because

just the name Mark Devereaux reminded
me of those old southern gentlemen.

I mean, I'll never forget
the first time I met him.

The only thing he said to me,

"Don't ever lie to me."
He said, "Just don't ever lie to me."

I says, "Man, I did whatever I did,
not tell you everything I did.

I ain't gonna lie."

Because I've never believed in lying
anyhow, I wasn't gonna start then.

The plan is to find the path to victory

if it is there, to protect the client,
to help the client.

So if you start out
"I'm just gonna plead guilty,"

you never go through the mental
discipline of "Can I find the way?"

We probably started ads, "If you want
him as a witness, give him immunity,"

something like that.

And that would have met head-on

with the 180-degree opposite position.

Is a plea a possibility for this case?

A plea is always a possibility.

The issue of how he will address
these charges is being evaluated.

When you talk about what Jerry
was facing, it gets complicated.

If you start adding up all of the
different counts he was charged with,

he was facing a lot of time.
And I know it was well over 10.

I remember it having a sense of

huge sympathy for the ordeal
it was being imposed on,

and in the way it was being imposed.

Prosecutors say this is the man
who started it all.

Jerome Jacobson faces nine counts
of conspiracy

in a plot they say involved
$20 million dollars' worth of

McDonald's winning game prizes stolen
and then sold to friends and relatives.

If he could cooperate, it would provide
us just so much information

to find all these other winners.
And winners turned into recruiters,

and most importantly
to show exactly how he did it.

We could not quite figure it out.
And now we knew he was doing it,

we just didn't know the details
in how he was doing it.

The government always wanted to know
how he did it

and he did not cooperate
from the beginning.

He would have, but for the fact that
his lawyers would not allow him to

until we worked everything out.

It was the talk peace
but prepare for war. And...

We were preparing for a war.

I don't think there ever was
an exit strategy to stopping.

He'd been perfecting it for 13 years,

it's just gotten better and probably
easier for him to do.

And the only reason he got caught was
because he pissed somebody off

and somebody went to the FBI and said,
"Hey, guess what's happening."

"Informant, key to unlocking scam
behind the golden arches."

Of course they never named
who the informant was,

but that's how it all came apart.

Do you have any idea who the informant
might have been?

Nope.

I think it's the FBI.

Before this ever went down,

there was a box across the street
from my house on a pole,

placed there by Blue Ridge Electric.

I'd always questioned what it was.
I've developed a lot of property.

I'd never seen that box.

I suspected they were eavesdropping
on to me,

not because of McDonald's

but because of a fellow developer
here on the lakes.

The FBI came in.

the drug enforcement people came in,
everybody came in,

tied up all of his shit.

And I was on the peripheral that,
within a week

after my arrest
and after this went down,

Blue Ridge Electric trucks came into
the field across my street

and that box is gone.

So that's why I've always felt
their story of how an informant,

or how somebody came forward,

I felt like it was bullshit.

- Do you know who the informant is?
- I do.

- Are we...
- Next question.

Without the informant

telling the FBI where to go,
who to look at...

This case would have never
been broken. Never.

I will never tell you who the source
was. You will never get that from me.

If I was a dead body,
you could not get that off my corpse.

That's how much I think about
the Bureau's program.

It has to work like that, right?

If you had to make a guess, who
do you think the informant would be?

I don't think it was anybody in mind.

If it is, I'd be very surprised,
real surprised.

If you're gonna surprise me,
go ahead and surprise me.

I know who broke the case,
I had this moment right now...

I'm not sure if I feel comfortable
saying who broke the case. I need to

talk to some people and make sure
that I'm not in danger

if I say who broke the case.
Because right now...

I don't know if it's gonna come back
and bite me in the butt.

Who do you think it was?

Frank Colombo.