Original subtitles

MAN: From 1989 to 2001,

there were almost no legitimate winners

in the McDonald's Monopoly game.

I mean, how crazy bullshit is that? (LAUGHS)

(CASH REGISTER DINGS)

McDonald's makes french fries and apple pies.

They don't make marketing.

MAN 2: Simon Marketing actually produced and came up with

the Monopoly game.

The FBI told us the game pieces are being stolen.

MAN: And the person who's controlling this

is this Uncle Jerry.

We had this one shot.

I wanted to burn down the criminal enterprise.

So, we were on the wire taps

to find out the depths of this scheme.

MAN 3: We did an analysis of past winners' phone records.

MAN 4: All these phone calls include Jerome Jacobson,

also known as Jerry Jacobson,

head of security for Simon Marketing.

[bright tone]

[dramatic music]

[indistinct chatter]

- Hey, here's a man who looks

like he has something to say.

- Are we all set, Ronnie? - Well, I bet!

Oh! - Hey, careful.

- Looks like he's got flubber

shoes on, too, today.

[laughter]

- A wonderful anonymous donor

mailed a Mono--a Monopoly game piece,

and right here in the middle of it

was a little winning ticket of $1 million.

- Whoa! - Hey, wow!

[cheers and applause]

[dramatic music]

- Somebody won a $1 million Monopoly game

at McDonald's, and God bless him,

decided to send that money to the children of St. Jude.

- Well, this is a great day.

Uh, we and McDonald's have a game going,

which, uh, a person won a game piece

in--in Texas and mailed it to St. Jude's anonymously

and, uh, McDonald's worked out a way to pay the game piece

even though it could--really can't be transferred.

- It's just a wonderful Christmas story

that someone would give that way anonymously

and not want any recognition,

uh, for the children at St. Jude.

♪ ♪

- The McDonald's Monopoly game went back to 1987

and so we didn't know how long the contest was fixed.

- St. Jude's was listed as a winner which,

you know, was, uh, certainly an anomaly.

We didn't know if this is part of this conspiracy.

- We didn't know how Jerry Jacobson

was involved in this fraud scheme

or if he was Uncle Jerry.

I mean, at first you just think it's an alias name

but at least it was at least half of the name.

- Hey, help me, Fred, will you?

Ooh, this is heavy. Ooh, ooh!

- Odds of finding the winning piece

were one in more than 206,000,000.

Odds of someone giving it away, Heaven only knows.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[seagulls squawking]

- My name is Marvin Braun. I live in Miami, Florida.

Jerry Jacobson is my stepbrother, yes.

He is my stepbrother.

- Yeah, I mean we grew up as--

I don't think brother brothers,

but we grew up close.

We're only a week apart in age.

His dream in life was always becoming an FBI agent.

- There I was out on my first assignment.

- It never worked out,

but it's funny. It's a funny story.

If you said to me to describe this story,

I would say, "Don't believe it,"

but it's true.

Don't believe it. [laughs]

Just weird.

It's just weird how it happened.

[tense music]

He had discussed about the game pieces one time.

I think it was 1989 and we had discussed

how, you know, he--he would be able to possibly get

the $25,000 game piece, and, um, you know,

if we could do something with it and, you know, whatever.

♪ ♪

A month later or six weeks later--

I don't remember-- he showed up with a piece.

And he says, uh, cash it in.

There was an 800 number to, uh, call, which I did,

and they gave me instructions. I went to the post office.

I registered it--whatever the words are at the post office--

and everything else, and I sent it in.

♪ ♪

I think I was the first person to turn a ticket in.

♪ ♪

He knew I knew--I, um-- I'd keep my mouth shut.

I guess that's the right way of saying it.

He trusted me with it, you know?

- No.

No.

♪ ♪

- So we were looking into

Simon Marketing's "Jerry Jacobson."

♪ ♪

Once we got the title III surveillance

listening to phone calls,

we had him on the wire all day, all night.

- So we had thought,

"Hey, this may be the main guy."

So then we started focusing more on trying

to figure out who he was.

- After really digging into

this Jerome Jacobson background,

we discovered among other things that, you know,

he had been a police officer in--in Hollywood, Florida.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

- To become a police officer,

you have to be a level-headed individual.

Honesty and trustworthiness is paramount.

Jerry Jacobson was a patrolman

and, uh, he came to me in the parking lot one morning.

At that time I was investigating the death

of a newborn baby.

We had no leads at all,

and Jerry told me that he had some psychic friends

that read about the case

and that they were willing to assist.

My reaction was I was grateful

and I did take him up on the offer.

I don't know that there's anything wrong

having psychics as friends.

I thought that was pretty wonderful.

- I met Jerry at the Hollywood Police Department.

We both were on the same squad

and we started about the same time,

and one day he showed up at my front door

to inform me that my boyfriend was cheating on me.

So that's how I met Jerry.

[laughing]

[dramatic music]

We dated off and on,

and there were some good times and some bad times,

but, um, we got married in Tennessee.

I think it was '81,

and Jerry became a stepfather to my sons.

- This big long silence isn't gonna be in there, is it?

[laughing]

[distant car passing]

One day he started to shave

and he couldn't reach all the way up to shave.

It was difficult,

and it was getting more difficult

every time he tried to move.

By noon, he couldn't lift his arms...

He couldn't lift his arms, period,

so I took him to the hospital.

[distant siren blaring]

And they ran the test for multiple sclerosis

and Guillain-Barré and a couple of other things

and he had the Guillain-Barré.

He says he's got MS...

[dramatic music]

But technically it was Guillain-Barré

and I--I took leave from my work

and spent time at the hospital with him

'cause his mother was gonna put him in a nursing home.

♪ ♪

I gave him 15 minutes a day to feel sorry for himself

and after that 15 minutes, we're gonna work,

'cause I felt like if we kept working,

maybe we could stay ahead of the paralysis.

So I fed him and gave him showers

and walked him up and down the hall

and all that stuff.

♪ ♪

After six or eight months,

he finally turned around before it got

to his respiratory system.

It was getting there,

but it didn't quite take over.

So--and then the next day;

after the next couple of days, it stabilized,

and then started turning around a little bit.

♪ ♪

- There's always a question,

why somebody leaves a law enforcement career early.

Many times there's a good reason,

but--but there's always a question.

It's not typical.

Um, and--and in his case, you know,

we learned that he had, you know--

he had a--a condi--health condition or an accident that,

you know, had him go out, I guess,

on a disability.

- He moved to Atlanta because there was a doctor in Atlanta

or a hospital that dealt with nothing but MS.

I think the MS really threw his life completely

because I think he always

wanted to be in law enforcement,

and having the MS completely changed his life.

[dramatic music]

- We moved to Atlanta together.

I got a job shortly after we came here in security.

He started getting better...

♪ ♪

And at that point,

he wanted to go back to work.

Simon Marketing offered him a job working security

for the Monopoly promotions.

♪ ♪

- We as the FBI could not and logically would not

march into Simon Marketing

and start asking questions about Jerry and that process.

You know, generally when the FBI starts asking questions,

people, you know-- people get--

get a little spun up and wonder, really, why.

- We were working hand in hand with McDonald's

just trying to figure out how much they knew

about Simon Marketing.

Surprisingly, McDonald's didn't know much

about the process that Simon Marketing went through

with their promotional games.

- I wasn't familiar with Simon Marketing at all

until this investigation began.

After that meeting with the FBI,

I realized that I needed to learn a little bit more

about Simon Marketing and the promotion,

so I set up a meeting with Simon Marketing

under the guise of trying to learn how

the security procedures were in place.

[dramatic music]

- We were able to enlist McDonald's

to do these inquiries on our behalf,

but I think also on their behalf, too.

- Yeah, yeah, no.

We--we would--we would have

not told McDonald's.

Because if we're wrong,

we've--we've sullied somebody's reputation

for no good reason.

- I don't know how much he was making at Simon.

His wife was working.

I don't know if he needed the money.

- No, I think he said he has a contact

to get them or something.

I think it was contact. It was not him.

It was not him.

It was not him.

- He--go ahead. I'm--

- He--he--he gave me the idea

it was not him stealing the tickets,

that he had a contact how to get the tickets.

I was under the impression Jerry was the security for it.

In other words,

that another person was taking the tickets

or whatever. I wasn't sure.

I thought Jerry was security.

[tense music]

- When I met with Simon Marketing,

we went through the security procedures

and the procedures at the printing press.

They actually had a very thorough

and comprehensive operation for ensuring the security

and integrity of their-- of our game pieces,

so I was very pleased with what I saw.

♪ ♪

- McDonald's reports that at the facility there,

it was incredibly secure and that this idea

that--that things are--are loose

or that they could walk right out of there

was--was, you know, almost impossible.

Highly un--highly, highly unlikely.

The obvious question was how this whole process worked.

How were--how were game pieces printed, distributed?

- Simon Marketing had these game pieces made

just north of Atlanta

by a secure printing business.

♪ ♪

[country music]

♪ ♪

- My name is Jack Sisk.

I actually was working in security at Dittler

when--for around 15 years, actually.

- My name's Perry Pealock,

and I was the bindery supervisor.

- Name's Doyle Grant, and I was shipping clerk.

- My name's Gilben Peeples, and I was the parch clerk

in the maintenance department.

- Dittler Brothers Printing

was a very secure printing company,

and that's how we got into the lottery business

and into scratch-off games.

- And I think that's one of the reasons

that we got the U.S. postage stamp job

because the federal government said,

"Hey, this place is really secure,"

'cause we got that and it went real well.

- And then it grew from there.

You know, three or four years,

and McDonald's millions and millions of dollars

to pay to print all this stuff.

- I was the director of security

for Dittler Brothers between 1987 and 2000,

and I worked with Jerry when they were running Monopoly

because Simon and Dittler were real close.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- We had people in Dittler Brothers 24 hours.

The Dittler Brothers facility was very secure.

You had to go through a guard shack

to get into the facility,

you had to sign in when

you got into the facility,

then you had to go through

another guard to get into the room

where the state lotteries are being produced

along with our game pieces.

- When Monopoly was running,

it would just about take

everything in the plant running,

it would get so big.

That was our largest customer by a long shot.

You're talking hundreds of millions

of game pieces, you know.

- When we did press runs of winners,

we pretty much surrounded the press.

They had alarm systems.

They had cameras.

The gate was opened and it wasn't us,

alarm would go off.

- Well, we had a big vault

we had the winners in.

♪ ♪

- There were two locks.

It's almost like, you know, back in the Cold War,

you'd have two people in a missile silo,

and it takes two.

- Jerry was in there for Simon

to make sure that Dittler Brothers

were doing their jobs.

Jerry would stand behind and look over their shoulder

and get their combination.

Then he would raise holy hell

because we allowed him to do that.

- All the game pieces that were produced

by Dittler Brothers were loaded on trucks.

- Security would actually physically lock

the back of the truck.

- Once that truck left,

we normally would get on an airplane,

fly to that city,

and meet the truck the next morning

to unlock it, break the seal,

verify what was loaded.

- My name's Brian Litteral.

I worked security/quality control

for the games that McDonald's usually ran.

We would bring the labels out--

free drinks, free fries--

and the two pieces would assemble together,

the label on top of the cup.

[dramatic music]

The higher-level winners was done by a completely different

more secure process.

I would usually get a call saying that Jerry was gonna be

coming in with, uh, an independent auditor.

♪ ♪

- Dittler Security has to be there,

Simon has to be there,

the auditor has to be there,

and the customer service rep has to be there,

and they all witnessed the winner run.

- The auditor would unlock the suitcase.

There was an envelope inside

with signatures across the seal

to make sure that it was still the same contents

as to when it was packaged,

and inside there,

there would be a certain number of seeds.

This is what a seed would look like,

one of which was a high-level winner.

The rest were commons,

and then I would insert them

in various production lines.

- No one knew,

and no one was supposed to know,

where the high-level winner was.

♪ ♪

- So you go into the McDonald's,

you open up the game piece,

and maybe you're a instant $1 million winner.

- I won! - I won!

- And so when these game pieces got

to the Simon Marketing redemption center,

and it goes through the process of,

"Do we have a real winner..."

♪ ♪

They literally would be opened by a person with gloves--

it is all being recorded--

and there would always be an error made

in the winning game piece.

Say, on one corner there's a little chip

out of the word.

- We also write on the $1 million winner

a little code on there with a--a black light pen

that you can't see.

So if you show up with a piece

that doesn't have the code on it,

you're gonna get caught real soon.

♪ ♪

- We were always a little bit overboard

but, uh, you know, we protected McDonald's,

and--and I think that's a major reason they used us,

and, uh, of course Jerry was in there

sort of telling them how it needed to be built.

- Everybody liked Jerry.

I mean, everybody in the office liked Jerry.

He wasn't real flashy.

We always had Thanksgiving.

Everybody sort of brought in a potluck at Thanksgiving,

and Jerry always brought in ribs,

and his ribs were delicious.

They would just fall off the bone, you know?

So everybody looked forward to his ribs,

but, uh, he didn't seem to be big-headed at all.

- And he was always very generous.

If he made ribs for himself,

he would make them for the whole office.

Jerry was--he's a generous fellow.

We got divorced,

and even when he was married again

and I needed something,

he would be right there.

There's nothing stingy about him at all.

After we got divorced,

it was like even though he was the head

of security for Simon,

he still worked under my guidelines

in Dittler Brothers.

I told him if he stole anything,

I'd kill him. [laughs]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Exciting. I'm not gonna lie.

It was exciting and everything else,

and, uh, you know, I deposited it,

and we split it.

Down the road,

he came to me and he said that

he could do bigger pieces.

I--I'd not cashed in anything but a $25,000 ticket,

and I didn't want any parts of them.

At that time,

I was going to New York, like, every Tuesday morning

and coming home every Wednesday night.

I was buying maternity clothes in New York

for my maternity shop.

So I approached two people who

were manufacturers in New York

that I dealt with for many, many, many years

and I approached them if they would be interested

in possibly doing a deal with Jerry.

- I'd rather not mention names.

- No. There we--I'm pretty s--

well, maybe his nieces and nephews.

[laughing]

No, I never heard anybody refer to him as Uncle Jerry.

[dramatic music]

- For a while,

the question was, "Well, who is Uncle Jerry?"

Oh, well there's a Jerry Jacobson working at Simon.

That must be Uncle Jerry.

But there was always this inference maybe that

Uncle Jerry was--was somehow connected to organized crime--

Italian organized crime

because the Uncle connotation gives this kind of

almost like a, you know, Godfather-ish sort of moniker.

♪ ♪

And we found out that there was another Jerry

involved in this named Jerry Colombo.

- People everywhere are winning big

playing the Monopoly game at McDonald's.

Jerry Colombo won a Dodge Viper,

and there are two $1 million prizes left.

- My name is Frank Colombo.

I'm brother of "Jerry" Gennaro Colombo.

- And I'm Heather Colombo,

and I am Frank Colombo's wife.

- I really wanted him to keep the car.

You know, I was, you know, a young guy.

Like, hey, a Dodge Viper? That'd be pretty damn cool.

Can I borrow it?

Uh, but it was too small.

I mean, he was a big guy.

Um, but it was kinda funny

'cause all off--all of my friends were calling me,

"Hey, your brother won-- won the car.

Oh, my God!"

And I'm sitting go--laughing

in the back of my head going,

"Yeah, okay, he won the car. Sure."

You know, it was kinda-- it was just amusing

that people believed it.

It worked.

[both laughing]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- I'm Robin Colombo.

My husband is Jerry Colombo-- Gennaro Colombo.

♪ ♪

He was part of the Colombo crime family.

♪ ♪

That commercial, that almost cost him his life,

because he wasn't supposed to do a commercial.

- Because he's a ham.

He was even gonna be in a movie

with Jackie Chan, as a matter of fact.

I said, "What? That don't even sound right.

You, a big-ass Sicilian, and a Chinaman,

in a western? I said, "Oh, my God."

And it was that "Shanghai Noon--Night,"

whatever it is. It was that.

- Ma, come get this dog outta here.

- The Sicilian culture, of course, is family first

no matter what,

but when I met her,

I didn't want her to know my last name,

'cause I wanted her to know me and not my family.

- As a matter of fact,

for the first three to four months,

I didn't even know his name.

He would go by a completely different name,

and only did I see a bracelet on his wrist one day

and I questioned him on the name that said Frank C.

I mean, this is entirely different

from the name that he gave me.

- Yes, uh, she--I went by Tony Ayanatti.

[both laughing]

I kinda keep that in the background, you know?

Not too many people know who my family is until now.

[upbeat music]

- Five families have run New York's

Italian-American mafia.

The names are familiar:

Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese,

Lucchese, and Colombo.

- Police in Brooklyn pulled a man's body

out of the water duct-taped inside a blue tarp.

Police say someone also tied a cinder block

to the victim's ankles.

- My name is Joe Colombo.

I should be treated the same as anybody else.

- Joe Colombo:

real estate broker, mafia boss,

and one of the biggest con men

in the history of organized crime.

- What was your reaction when you learned that this shooting

had occurred at the Colombos'?

- I just heard, like, shots-- about eight shots,

and it's--I didn't think they were shots.

I thought they were firecrackers.

- His high profile caused rival mob bosses

to okay his murder.

- The man some called

an underworld boss.

♪ ♪

- My brother wasn't the normal, you know--

when you want "The Sopranos," you know,

and he's, uh--the guy's talking to them, you know,

all, "Hey, forget about it,"

and all this kind of nonsense.

- Forget about it. - Forget about it.

- Ah, forget about it.

- Forget about it.

- [screaming] [blows landing]

- That's--that's the movies.

Now, did he do things like that?

Absolutely, you know?

But he did it with humor.

You know, more like, I guess--

I guess if you got, uh, Marlon Brando and Joe Pesci

and put them together,

you'd probably end up with my brother.

[both laughing]

You know? That's pretty much it.

- That was it.

- Uh, now that I think about this,

if you got Al Capone and Rodney Dangerfield

and mashed them together,

you get my brother. I think that's a good analogy.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

- The first time I met Jerry,

we looked at each other,

and it was like the chemistry between us was crazy.

Um, like you see in a cartoon, you know,

everything like, "Boom, boom."

I was having a long-distance relationship

with a federal agent.

It was not that fun.

And, um, Jerry was fun,

so I chose him.

My father was military and strict.

Very strict.

So, yeah, that didn't go over so well,

but I didn't care.

- [singing in foreign language]

- I rebelled.

- [singing in foreign language]

- We were married in Panama City, Florida.

It wasn't as extravagant as you would think

because I was pregnant,

so no Catholic wedding.

- [singing in foreign language]

- My brother Jerry had his hands

in a lot of different avenues.

He had some, uh, bookieing things that he was doing

with bookies and what have you.

Uh, he was in charge of, uh, security at the Taj Mahal

for a few years.

Uh, that was the old,

uh, Trump Taj Mahal.

Uh, he would gamble and, uh,

he would win a lot.

I don't know if it was--that was rigged as well.

Possibly. Everything's rigged in life.

- Trust nothing anymore. - Yeah.

He was always looking at a way

to make some good easy money.

- You know we had the little gray M&M as well.

Did you know that?

Okay, I used to smoke a half a joint a night.

I needed to relax.

I need to put on something funny

and just let me chill.

[laughs]

Well...

When I would wake up in the middle of the night,

I had to have something sweet,

so I had Reese's cups down in the kitchen, right?

So he had to let me know there was a gray M&M

wrapped in aluminum foil and he told me,

"Don't touch it."

- The rules say if you find

the gray imposter M&M's,

the winning bag could be worth

$1 million!

- Show me the money!

- And then, um, he says,

"You're also gonna win a Publishers Clearing House,"

where they come to your door and knock.

- You have won $1 million

from Publishers Clearing House.

- I can't believe it!

- This is the truth!

- Real people really win

the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.

- They're probably gonna say, "Oh, bullshit."

You know, all that, but I'm just telling you

what my husband told me.

♪ ♪

Jerry wanted something big.

He kept threatening,

"You know, I can go work for my uncles

up in New York," you know?

I'm like, "Well, you know what?

I think it's time." [laughs]

You know, you can spend too much time with somebody

and you don't play golf and, um,

I mean, the only golf club he had was about this big

and that was, well...

[blow lands]

[upbeat music]

So he went up north and he got with Uncle Dominic

who was a Godfather.

- No, they call that out of respect.

He wasn't an actual uncle,

but he loved my husband

because my husband was old school

full-blooded Sicilian.

He was hooking him up with everything.

- My name's Jennifer Ethridge.

Robin Colombo's my mother.

Jerry Colombo is my stepfather.

You couldn't help not to like him,

and especially with, um, you know,

his "career" that he was into.

Um, it was definitely intriguing.

At the time, you know, he would show me

duffle bags of money and whip it out.

"Oh, here you go. Go buy you something nice."

You know?

And then I'd say

when I was about 15, 16 years old,

that's when Jerry got into the Monopoly thing,

and then that definitely, you know--

it was--that was a big deal.

He had promised me, um, a $1 million ticket

whenever I turned 18,

because nobody could have the same last name.

Sin--since my last name was Ethridge,

um, you know, I was gonna be able to--

to win a $1 million ticket, and I was like,

"Oh, heck yeah. Absolutely."

[chuckles]

- Uh, with the Monopoly situation, um,

Uncle Dominic worked for family members

in the New York division

and, um, a mutual friend of his

kind of said, "Hey, I got this guy

that's doing this and this. You might be interested,"

and so forth and so on,

and, uh, that was Jerome

from Simon Marketing.

Uh, he was getting the tickets.

[tense music]

- I don't know. It could have been.

- I think Jerome possibly started it on his own

in the beginning,

and then people got wind of what he was doing

and then they said, "Hey, let's see if we can use this

as an avenue to expand it,"

and I believe that was brought to my brother's attention.

Say, "Hey, there's this guy, he's doing this,

and let's see if we can expand the, uh, horizon."

♪ ♪

- But then Jerry-- my Jerry--

received a phone call that Uncle Dominic died.

- I--you know, you don't really talk about that.

So anyway, my Jerry and Jerry Jacobson

became partners on the Monopoly thing.

♪ ♪

- Working any case is like big puzzle.

You--you start with a little piece,

and you've gotta try to vet whether that is legitimate,

whether it has any merit to it.

- Here we go, here we go.

The undercover portion

with Michael Hoover

went, you know--

went beyond expectations.

We had, you know, Michael Hoover

calling AJ Glomb.

- We suspected Glomb was a recruiter,

and he probably didn't just recruit Hoover.

- Is there a connection to Uncle Jerry?

- And so we started looking into him,

and then expanded into other phone lines

- We had coverage on many lines,

including Jerry Jacobson, AJ Glomb,

and a number of the winners.

- The spider web of all, like--

we didn't know how big this was.

We--we had this Uncle Jer-- it was--

everything was very general, nebulous.

So inside the--the wire room,

people sitting there, getting ready to listen,

and nothing happens, right?

You put all this effort into it,

and nothing happens.

You're spending your weekend doing that.

- Unfortunately, in these conversations on the wire,

the winners mostly had innocuous conversations

that have nothing to do with the crime,

so we start coming up with, "All right,

"how do we get past winners to recount how they

allegedly won these pieces?"

- I said, "Look, we can do this.

"Why don't we bring all these past winners

to Vegas?" I just said Vegas.

It's all I said.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

I don't know why I picked Vegas.

Probably 'cause of the fun mere thing,

which is the immediate, "No!" You know?

But I said, "Hey, just hear me out.

"Let's do a reunion of all these past winners.

Let's bring all these people together to tell us,"

'cause we didn't know their stories.

Tell us how they won these,

and what they did with it, that kind of thing,

'cause, you know, McDonald's has big pockets.

They get some all-expenses paid trip to Vegas,

balloons falling and the confetti,

and they love that shit.

You know, the questions were,

"Mathews, where are you gonna do this?"

Embassy Suites.

Take the whole floor,

rope everything off, right?

Just in case stupid shows up and you have them all line up

in these rooms

and just arrest them all

at the same time, right?

Great thing.

[mimics buzzer sound] No.

No way in hell.

- [laughs]

No, Doug. Not gonna do that.

[laughs]

How much is that gonna cost us? [laughs]

We--you know, we did have some budgets to deal with, you know?

So--

- I can't remember what it was.

It was like, "Get him out of here."

You know, whatever it was.

"I can't believe you said that."

- Doug is one of the hardest-working agents

I've ever met in my life.

Very creative, you know? He'll do anything.

He'll try anything, and he can talk forever.

He is relentless.

[chuckles]

- This idea of "hosting" a reunion

of past winners in Las Vegas, you know,

seemed so outlandish up front,

and then we realized, "Well, wait a minute.

"If you're not gonna follow through with it,

you can promise--" [laughs]

"You can promise some pretty elaborate things."

Everybody likes to go to Vegas,

so in preparation for that wonderful conference

that we were gonna have all expense paid,

we could contact these winners,

go out and film them to capture their so-called story,

and then the carrot was you get this trip to--to Vegas.

- Rick was freaked out about it,

but I wasn't.

Remember, I'm the guy that's just, you know,

"You know this is gonna work,"

'cause I know it is, right?

It's all a shamrock, baby. Shamrock.

[dramatic music]

- I was the direct contact with the winners,

so I could legitimize all of the information.

It was all recorded and, you know,

it was 17 years ago,

so it was a big tape recorder that I carried around

in a black McDonald's briefcase.

I even carried it to my friend's wedding

in Jackson Hole because, you know,

I had to be able to tape the calls whenever they came.

It's like I had to flip the tapes

I'd be like,

"Can I put you on hold for a second?"

You know, and then I'd flip the tapes

and then put them back on.

[tense music]

- Amy would call them up and say, "Hey, look,

"we're putting together this media release

"of previous winners, how they won it,

"what they did with it,

"some of their story that

"it hasn't been really told.

You know, we'll come to you or you can come to us."

Wherever we were gonna do it,

whatever hotel that you want.

Nobody said no to that.

Most everybody was like,

"Tell me when we're going to Vegas."

- Obviously we were not gonna do a reunion,

um, but to the winners,

we told them, uh,

"We're planning this big reunion,"

and we started to get them actually

excited to be going to Las Vegas.

- That was kind of fundamental that was a bit of a ruse.

We, you know--we didn't make reservations in Las Vegas.

I think the pitch was, you know,

"We're gonna put your story up on the big screen

"and, you know, over a dinner,

"and everybody's gonna clap.

Are you interested

in the reunion of winners?"

And of course they are.

Well, locking them into

a story on camera

takes a B minus case and makes it, you know,

an A, A plus case.

[distant cars passing]

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

- My name is Doug Astralaga,

I'm an FBI agent,

and I was the lighting guy

for the Shamrock production

in the McDonald's case.

Oh, so this is the little--

yeah, I remember this.

[laughs]

♪ ♪

- Doug Astralaga was a relatively young agent.

Uh, you know, real--real enthusiastic,

uh, charismatic guy.

- When I came out of Quantico,

I wanted to do something exciting.

- Originally I had stuck him with the admin agent

on this title III,

which is, uh, of all the jobs,

probably the most thankless.

I mean, it--it really is a-- a brutal job,

but there's a reward process that happens,

so in Doug's case,

we let him work on the undercover

with--with Doug Mathews as the--

the "lighting guy."

- I had no idea what I was doing.

I was just using this light meter

and pressing something on this going,

"It's great."

This is--I still have no idea how to use one of these.

[laughs]

Excellent, but I do believe

we need more lighting over here.

♪ ♪

Really, the point was to engage them

in conversations.

That had to reconcile with what

they had originally stated for McDonald's

to win the prize.

- We recorded these interviews with them

so the FBI could then match the timeline

match the facts.

What they originally told McDonald's,

what they're telling us on camera,

what the FBI sort of already knew.

- So that once we had the evidence showing that

you know you didn't win this legitimately,

you've lied to the FBI,

and here's the evidence to prove it,

they would be more willing to cooperate.

- Yes.

- The FBI was merely--when-- when the FBI took a film crew

to a winner,

that winner had already contacted Simon Marketing,

hence McDonald's,

claiming to have been a winner.

They're already saying, "I did this,

and this is how I obtained this game piece."

An individual could never claim that's entrapment

because they did it before the law enforcement

was involved.

Entrapment is to have law enforcement

put the idea into the person's head

and to get them to do something

they otherwise wouldn't have done.

We weren't saying,

"Say this, say this, and say that."

We were saying, "How?

What?

Where?

Who?"

Those are just opportunities

for him to fill in the blanks

and tell us what he wants to tell us.

- Remember just keep looking at me.

- Okay.

- And if you mess up or you feel like

you wanna say it again,

we can start all over again. - Okay.

And I'll try to limit my hand gestures.

Sometimes it gets in there so I'll make sure I don't do that.

Um, okay, why don't we go back to that day that you won

in New Hampshire and can you just sort of

describe the day for us?

What you were doing in the morning and at work and then--

- It was a, uh--a summer day.

Uh, no, wait, uh, I wasn't working.

It was Sunday, as a matter of fact.

Uh...

And there wasn't a whole lot of work to do,

so, uh, you know,

just browsing through the Sunday paper

as I am want to do.

- He was fumbling through it trying to figure out

how he won that particular piece.

In reality,

a life experience like that

is drilled into your memory forever and ever.

Nobody wins $1 million on a regular basis.

- Uh, I found the insert

and I found the, uh,

little tear-off tab

and I got cold, very cold.

- He was sweating so bad.

Like, I know at some point, um, Amy even said to me,

"Every time you ask him a question,

it's like I gotta get the towel to dot his head."

It was pouring out...

- Uh--

- Because he was lying about everything.

- Well, suffice it to say,

I just--I just got cold all over.

- No, I, uh, first I wasn't-- I wasn't so sure about it.

I went to a lawyer.

- [laughs] - I did.

I want--you know, you need to protect yourself

and, uh--

- No, I don't. Uh--

- No, it was, um-- oh...

Over in, uh-- oh...

- You could zoom in, 'cause we did,

zoom in on his forehead

and you could just see the sweat.

[tense music]

- Yes. - Okay.

- Yeah, um--

- I'm leaky. - [giggles]

- You know, and I'd say stuff like,

"Hey, so nobody, like, called you up and said,

"'Hey, we need you to be a winner,' or whatever?"

And he'd go, "God, no! I'd never do that!"

And it just--just pours. The sweat would pour.

I went to a lawyer,

uh, and he advised me to pr--

at all cost, protect my identity.

- It just seemed odd to me that many of the people I talked to

did not want to come forward

and they seemed to have knowledge

about what their legal rights were

about, uh, being anonymous or not.

- Buddy Fisher was the father of Robin Colombo,

uh, who was married to Jerry Colombo.

[dramatic music]

- I'll never forget it.

I was upstairs in my bedroom,

and my father called me

and there wasn't many words exchanged.

He just said, "I want the big one,"

so I knew what it meant.

- He did get one of the $1 million tickets

and he had never broken a law in his entire life.

One stipulation that my grandfather made,

um, he says, "Okay, If I-- if I get this ticket,

I do not--I'm--I'm not doing a commercial."

[phone rings]

But I remember we would be

getting phone calls,

and they would talk to my grandfather

and say, "Hey, we're trying to get all of the, um--

the Monopoly winners together for some kind of reunion,"

or something like that.

I wanna say it was Vegas,

so he did make that trip.

- Now, had your wife or anyone in your whole family

ever won anything like that before?

- No, no. - Never?

- Nothing. - So this was big.

- It--huge.

- So you're the luckiest one in your family, huh?

- Yes, yes. - [laughs]

- So has any of your kids or grandkids played Monopoly

or tried to win or anything like that?

- Yes, yes, and we still do.

- Oh, good. - And we still do, yes.

- Have any of them won any cars or--

- No. - [chuckles]

- I think I won a cheeseburger.

- [laughs]

- You s--he did do one?

I did not know that.

Oh. Okay, yeah.

I di--I did not know that.

Hmm. Okay.

Wow. [laughs]

Is that around?

[laughs]

[upbeat music]

- You know, the greed was crazy here,

which is great for us. [laughs]

[jazz music]

♪ ♪

- One night Jerry and I

were out with our wives to dinner

and we went to the men's room together.

That sounds horrible but we went to the men's room together

and Jerry gave me a $1 million ticket.

- This is for you.

And I told him, "I don't wanna be involved.

I really don't."

I--I had not cashed in anything

but a $25,000 ticket.

I told him I didn't need the $1 million.

I told him I was out of it.

I said, "Jerry, you know what?

"I don't know what you did with these guys,

"how much you made, or anything else.

"There's a time and there's a place.

Stop," and everything else.

He said, "Well, just do something with the ticket."

[distant classical music playing]

So I took the ticket and I flushed it down the toilet.

[toilet flushes]

- Didn't--nothing. Zero.

- I didn't, either. How's that?

Yeah, how's that? I didn't either.

No.

I knew I was doing the right thing.

And Jerry had told me it was over and that was it.

[distant classical music playing]

I'm telling you,

the night I flushed that ticket down the toilet,

I thought it was over.

I thought it was over.

I swear to you on everything holy,

I thought it was over.

[dramatic music]

- If I even suspected he was taking tickets,

I would have told on him in a heartbeat,

and he knew it.

And I think that's why I didn't know it.

I--I bet that's why I didn't get a ticket.

[laughing]

♪ ♪

After Jerry got sick with this Guillain-Barré syndrome,

there was something different in him.

Even though he was well on the road to mending,

he could have repercussions later on

being crippled or bedridden or dead.

♪ ♪

So he had nothing to lose at that point.

♪ ♪

- My husband, Jerry,

we got a lot of my family members involved,

and that isn't all.

My family members that won,

that was just a little piece of the pie.

[door creaking]

[crickets chirping]

You had Al Capone with the prohibition.

♪ ♪

You had Mike Franzese with the gas,

and then now you have this-- the Monopoly.

That's really the highest three moneymakers

of the mob so far.

♪ ♪

My husband picked the winners.

He had tickets. He flew everywhere.

I think Uncle Jerry may have even got a little jealous.

- "Uncle Jerry" is Jerome Jacobson.

And Jerry is my husband, Jerry Colombo.

Jacobson became Uncle Jerry

because that's an Italian thing.

My husband gave him that out of respect.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- If your general opinion of mankind

is running kind of low this holiday season,

here's a story that might make you feel much,

much better about the human race.

♪ ♪

- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

in Memphis has received a very unusual gift.

[car engine revving]

♪ ♪

- Yeah, that's--that's Uncle Jerry.

♪ ♪

- Hospital officials are calling this

a gift from an angel

in the true spirit of the season.

♪ ♪

- This is a happy day. Whoo-hoo!

♪ ♪

- If you're out there and you hear me,

we love you.

[energetic music]

♪ ♪

[bright tone]

My brother took this little, small operation and made it huge.

Literally, it was a monopoly of scams.

(CASH REGISTER DINGS)

The winners, they would just lie, lie, lie.

We can push, and you never know when you're gonna hit a wall.

There was things that nobody knew.

And I just kept it all to myself.

I thought, "I'm never gonna get out of this."

I was about to panic.

I had no other option but to take this process through.

The money got too big.

FRANK COLOMBO: With that comes a price.

(GUN CLICKS)

(CASH REGISTER DINGS)