Original subtitles

- The game Monopoly has come to life at McDonald's.

- In 2001, you guys get a big tip.

- They said that the McDonald's Monopoly

promotion games are compromised.

- Win a McDLT, Coca-Cola, or $1 million.

- The source said it was all fixed.

And this guy, Uncle Jerry, is the person behind it.

The guy who handles all the high-end pieces,

his name is Jerry Jacobson.

Is this Uncle Jerry?

There had to be over 100, maybe 150 people

that had been in this huge conspiracy.

- We got another winner in May for $500,000 instant winner,

a woman named Brenda Phenis.

And she is Dwight Baker's sister-in-law.

He's a recruiter.

Everybody has to kick money up, so Brenda's not getting

$500,000 for herself to keep.

She's gonna get $90,000,

Dwight Baker is gonna get $90,000,

and Uncle Jerry-- Jerry Jacobson--

was gonna get $70,000.

- They're not real happy with her.

- We could have a problem. These guys are really mad.

- Dwight's gonna kill Brenda.

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

# #

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent-to-agent.

# #

This is "FBI True."

- Dwight Baker, key recruiter in the conspiracy,

and his wife, Linda Baker, went up to Indianapolis

to meet her sister, Brenda, who was refusing

to give up her share of the money.

- She's supposed to be at the Indianapolis, Indiana, airport.

- You're talking $500,000... - Yeah, it's a lot of money.

- But people have been killed

for a heck of a lot less than $500,000.

And in one of the calls, Baker says--

they were talking about the airport--

and he said, well, we can't do it there.

Well, "do it" could mean a lot of things,

but it could also mean something--something bad.

One of these abundance of cautious working theory was,

we're gonna go up there, and we're gonna kill her.

We may not do it in the airport,

but we're gonna do it.

So they're not gonna let her cash this check

and take the damn money.

- And so now, we're thinking, well, we can't let anybody

get injured in this thing, so--

- Of course. We have a duty to warn.

- So we get FBI Indianapolis all over the airport.

- We were still covert.

- The Bakers convinced her that

you're gonna have to go through with the original deal.

- They took control over Brenda and the check

to make sure it was cashed and that these payments were made.

- Ms. Phenis is probably not real happy,

but, you know, it didn't turn out to be a showstopper.

She was safe.

- And we can keep running the case.

I mean, okay, $500,000 gets out the door

versus we blow up the case

and take people down because of this.

I say we keep the case running. - Sure.

Absolutely. - We can always--

we can always try to recover that money another day.

- So after this happens, what's your guys' next step?

- We pick up calls from Jacobson

to a guy in Miami named Andrew Glomb.

We knew from phone records, too,

that Glomb had also been a recruiter,

finding people to be fraudulent winners, a year or two earlier.

So we applied for and got coverage on Glomb's phone.

So going into August, we were up on four lines now--

Andrew Glomb, Jerry Jacobson, Dwight Baker, and Linda Baker.

But we know the game's over.

They're gonna run this game, and by the end of the month,

we're done.

So we've gotta figure out pretty damn quick,

what can we do to lock in other prior winners?

Now, we've got Hughey.

We got Baker. We got Phenis. We got Jacobson.

We probably got Glomb now.

We got enough on them, but by this time,

the analysts had put together a chart

that looked like a giant spider web, a spaghetti,

with recruiters and 40, 50 people.

So there was all these names in there.

So we're going into August, and we've got that deadline.

We've got the challenge of, how are we gonna make cases

on all these prior people?

We decide that we are going to create

a reunion of past winners.

We're gonna invite them all to, like, Las Vegas,

like an old organized crime wedding,

where we swoop in and arrest them all at the wedding.

# #

But we--Tom nixed that.

- We got all these people.

We gotta fly them out there.

We gotta put them up.

Unfortunately, the bureau still had budgets back then,

and I'm thinking, let's see.

Great idea, just, you know, think about--

pare it down a little bit.

- They agree to do publicity as part of winning.

- George Chandler of Walhalla just won $1 million

in the Hatch, Match, and Win game.

- So that sort of morphed into,

let's create a fake production company,

go out, promise these people

the reunion of winners in Vegas.

I mean, we can promise them the moon and the stars.

We're not gonna deliver it.

Gonna go out to where they're at, and hey,

we're gonna film you describing how you won

that exciting, great day.

And then we're gonna put it on the big screen,

and you'll be a star in Vegas.

We got a couple of things going for us, right?

In McDonald's, you had a person named Amy Murray...

Who was a natural at doing this kind of stuff.

The bureau has all kinds of great videographers.

- So you gave the approval then, Tom...

- Yes.

- To do the undercover operation.

- Yeah, this was the next best, you know, a lot cheaper.

- Production company is gonna be called Shamrock Productions.

With the byline 'Cause You're Just Lucky.

If you think about the--

the little snide-- the dig there.

- So what was the rationale behind doing

the undercover operation?

- This was to get the evidence for court later on,

to hook these people into, this is what they've said.

# #

- We had this list of past winners.

What we didn't have is how they told McDonald's

that they won, when they would call in.

McDonald's didn't keep records of that.

We had to sort of recreate and get them on record

asserting, falsely, how they won.

- Who did you approach?

- We did three of these.

One of the first ones was Buddy Fisher.

He was a winner-- million-dollar winner.

He was Robin Colombo's father.

Robin Colombo was married to Jerry Colombo.

He won a car.

- I wasn't working, and this Sunday, as a matter of fact,

it wasn't a whole lot of work to do.

So, you know, just browsing through the Sunday paper,

as I am wont to do.

- He's sweating and stumbling...

- Uh...and...

- And can't go through the details

of how he won, because he's making it up on the fly.

- I'm leaking.

First, I wasn't so sure about it.

I went to a lawyer.

I did.

Well, you know, you need to protect yourself.

And, uh--

- No, I don't.

- No.

It was--oh, over in, uh--oh.

- Theoretically, it's the biggest day of his life.

I won like $70 in a lottery once,

and I remember every moment of that.

That was $70.

I mean, this guy was a million-dollar winner.

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

ever won anything like that before?

- No. - Never?

- Nothing.

- So this was big.

- Huge.

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

- Yes. Yes.

- So has any of your kids or grandkids

played Monopoly or tried to win or anything like that?

- Yes. And we still do.

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

- Have any of them won any cars or--

- Jerry Colombo won a Dodge Viper.

- No.

I think I won a cheeseburger.

- They did Gloria Brown right after that.

Gloria Brown was friends with Robin Colombo.

# #

Gloria Brown was pretty amenable--

- But very hesitant. - Hesitant.

- Gloria, do you recall the person that you spoke to

at the counter when you--

- No, I sure don't.

- You watch it, and there's another--

another element of kind of making up a story.

- But to say that the tapes were damaging

would be an understatement.

The only truth that they told in the whole thing

was probably their name.

- If you could just write, "Thanks McDonald's and--

- Thanks a million. - Oh, that's good.

Thanks a million. That's good.

- Thanks a million, McDonald's.

I got my McDonald's million at Hilton Head in South Carolina.

And it made me a millionaire.

- And then Hoover. - Hoover, yeah.

- Hoover had been recruited by Andrew Glomb

in 2000 to claim $1 million.

- Got the "People" magazine.

And inside, we had the Monopoly game

with the Instant $1 Million winner.

And it was great. It's fantastic.

- And I mean, Hoover was over the top

enthusiastic, laughing.

- He's smiling. He looks like a Cheshire cat.

It's great, and he--

- It was almost as if he had rehearsed it.

- And he could kind of keep the same story going,

but it was just so preposterous.

- I went to the beach for a while,

and I was a little klutzy.

The "People" magazine and my towel fell out of the backpack,

fell into the water, and got all wet.

I ended up throwing those away on the way to the car.

And then after, I was coming home,

I decided to stop and get provisions for dinner.

And I never got a chance to read the magazine.

And there it was right there at the checkout stand,

so I bought one.

And when I got home, I was leafing through it,

and we had the McDonald's Monopoly game.

And the first one I peeled off, I believe,

was Pennsylvania Avenue, and the second one I peeled off

was $1 Million Instant Prize Winner.

And it was like, wow, is this for real?

- And then they take them to the beach.

- Even before they went up there,

they had made $1 million check.

- Hoover is holding up the sign.

Hey.

- And some kid comes running by and grabs the check

and starts running down the beach.

# #

Probably high on marijuana, because he was

running the zigzag pattern--

- In the sand.

- And of course, Mathews is-- you know,

he's chasing them through the sand there.

And finally tackles him, knocks him over.

Kid's probably got, you know, a mouth full of sand,

and he was so out of it, he just--he just left him there.

Got the check. - One of the funniest parts.

We're up on Glomb's phone.

They do the Shamrock Production shoot,

and Hoover gets on the phone immediately

and calls Andrew Glomb to brag about how well he did.

- Academy Award winner. - Yeah.

We're sitting there listening to this.

We know from talking to Doug and everybody up there

what's going on.

I mean, it wrapped up with a bow.

- How did Jerry kind of recruit these people?

- He would initially recruit people that he met,

he knew, he trusted.

And then from there, these recruiters--

Glomb, Baker, there was others before that--would sort of

prove themselves by bringing in winners,

almost like a multi-level marketing thing.

You can move up the chain.

The one that comes to mind is Dwight Baker.

Baker recruits Hughey.

We're watching phone records.

All of a sudden, we start seeing all this traffic

back and forth between Hughey and a guy named John Davis

in Texas right around that time period

and conversations with Hughey and Baker.

So Hughey had become a winner, and then

progressed really quickly and became a recruiter

not four months later.

- We knew who the winner was before McDonald's.

- We told McDonald's... - Get ready.

- Really good chance that a guy named John Davis

is gonna call in... - And be the next winner.

- And be the next winner at the end of April--

at the end of August.

And sure enough, he was the guy.

# #

- How did Jerry Jacobson get his hands

on these winning game pieces in the first place?

- The printer would bring the high value piece--

and there are several people around watching this--

high value piece, and then they mix it up

with about 15, 20 other pieces.

So it's all mixed up in this envelope.

The envelope gets sealed, signed,

and there's a seal that goes on it,

and then it goes into a briefcase locked, handcuffed.

I don't know if it was handcuffed to Jerry,

or he was supposed to hang on to it.

And then Jerry and an independent CPA

would travel to the region that that high value piece

was supposed to be put into circulation

in the factory production line that makes McDonald's cups

and French fry packets.

And they've got 20 of these pieces,

and they've also got 400 other--

whatever the name-- - Non-winners.

- Non-winners.

And then they just mix them all up, and then they're going on.

The seal that went on the envelope,

he had somehow mistakenly gotten a roll of them,

so he had spares to use.

So when they were traveling, evidently,

he would break away, go into the bathroom,

switch out a similar envelope with a seal on it,

now with useless pieces, take the envelope

with the winning piece, stick it in his bulletproof vest

that he carried.

- Jacobson would then give these winning pieces

to his recruiters, who would find people

to claim the winning prizes.

- Every piece that Jerry stole and put into his network,

his spaghetti chart, ultimately,

would net him money. - Money.

- Anywhere-- $50,000, $90,000, $200,000.

So it was pretty lucrative for him and everybody else.

The recruiters would also be paid 50 grand or more

by the winners they recruited.

- So you're up against the gun.

You guys do this ruse, this undercover operation,

and then from there,

you're gonna propose for the takedown?

Is that the next steps?

- Early August, we started putting together

the plan for the takedown.

We put together this huge EC,

15, 20 pages, background on the case.

A lot of the work and the activity

was going on in South Carolina, Greenville, to be specific.

This thing gets sent to Columbia

headquarters, city division.

And from there, it's gotta be faxed to the Greenville RA.

We get a call from a small newspaper in Greenville,

and they say, we've got this secret EC document,

and we don't think we're supposed to have it.

- Oops. - Whoops.

- Oh, no. - What do you mean?

Well, it came through on our fax.

- Oh, shit. - Oh, shit.

- I mean, we are right at the cusp of taking this thing down.

Everybody is in the--

in the starting blocks ready to--

ready to pounce, and one fax could just

undermine the whole operation.

- Second time fax has almost screwed us.

- Exactly. So what happened?

- Somebody punched the wrong button,

and you know, it went to the wrong place.

- Speed dial.

- That one--that one I got a little--

a little heartburn with, you know?

- Sure.

- So Devereaux got together with the SAC in Columbia,

and they went over to the newspaper.

- It turned out it was a, I think, a small,

almost family-owned, longtime newspaper.

- And on bended knee, Devereaux and the SAC begged and pleaded

and cajoled and finally got him to hold the story.

- When we eventually got over that potential land mine

disaster, the plan for the takedown,

which was set for August 21st, was arrest of the main eight.

Jerry Jacobson, Dwight and Linda Baker, Brenda Phenis,

Michael Hoover, John Davis, Andrew Glomb,

and Ronald Hughey, but at the same time,

interviews of about 20 other winners.

The idea was, we're gonna do this all at once.

We know what you did.

You just need to tell us.

- How many teams do you have?

- Eight arrest teams. - How many states were you in?

- Five or six.

# #

- Jacksonville agents were on every arrest team,

a lot of the interview teams, so we--

you know, we were sending people out all over.

Well, we had a big command post in Jacksonville

to tally up who's been arrested,

who's been interviewed.

- So I snuck away from the command post for a few hours--

- During the arrest. - During the takedown.

He's learning about it now probably for the first time.

Statute's expired by now.

Buddy Fisher worked really close to the office,

so it was easy to go over there and interview him.

And I remember this.

As soon as we went to see him and sat down, it was,

you know, typical line, you know why we're here, don't you?

And you wait.

- Uh.

- And, is this about McDonald's?

Yep. - Good guess.

- He got the Shamrock Production visit, like,

a month earlier, but he never heard about

his invite to Vegas.

Maybe he figures he failed the audition,

but I think he thought something else was up.

- But there was larceny in all of their hearts.

I mean, they knew this was a hokey--

a hokey deal.

I mean, they knew it was criminal activity.

I went up to Washington with--

Tom Pickard was the acting director at the time--

and we did a press conference with Ashcroft.

Especially for Jacksonville, this was a big deal.

- 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.

All of these individuals are charged with conspiracy

to commit mail fraud.

- We were able to identify Jerry Jacobson

as the central figure in the distribution

of the fraudulently obtained game pieces.

- The FBI says Jacobson was paid

in $50,000 kickbacks from the winners

recruited by his friends.

On million dollar payouts, for example,

some of the fraudulent winners allegedly paid

when they got their first of 20 yearly installments, $50,000.

- So from the start of McDonald's putting out

this Monopoly game to the... - End.

- End, how much money was fraudulently won in this scam?

- The total was around $24 million

that we could account for.

- And I'm gonna say we recovered

damn near that much in cash and assets.

There were victims beyond McDonald's in this,

significant victims.

Simon Marketing, who ran the promotional games

for McDonald's, well, they went out

of business because of this.

Dittler Brothers, who printed all

the McDonald's Monopoly game pieces were impacted as well.

1,600 people approximately...

- Lost their jobs. - Lost their jobs.

- These people lost their jobs because

of one bad apple in Simon Marketing, Uncle Jerry.

# #

- So looking back, what comes to mind for you

thinking about this case?

- You work drug cases, and even if you're successful,

you take down the leader or the kingpin, whoever.

His seat doesn't even-- doesn't even get cold

before somebody else moves in.

Whereas in this case, we took it down,

and there's no--nobody else is gonna step in.

So that was a big positive.

- It was a fun case, you know?

We did a lot of unusual things.

- Uh... - Um...

Hey.

- And we dodged a few bullets.

- And nobody died. - And nobody died.

And it's something that, you know,

you can laugh and joke about, I mean, at this point in time.