How Does McMillions Turn a Fast-Food Scam into a Gripping FBI True-Crime Read?

Is McMillions the Wildest McDonald’s Monopoly Fraud Story You’ll Ever Read?

Discover how McMillions chronicles the real McDonald’s Monopoly scam, from stolen winning pieces and Mafia middlemen to an obsessive FBI sting, and why this true-crime book hits the sweet spot for fans of corporate fraud and investigative drama.

Keep reading to see how Jerome Jacobson’s inside job, the FBI’s undercover operations, and the authors’ true-crime storytelling turn McMillions into a high-stakes lesson in security, greed, and trust.

Recommendation

Jerome Jacobson, head of security at Simon Marketing – the firm responsible for running McDonald’s promotional Monopoly game – stole dozens of prize-winning game pieces, worth up to $1 million, from 1989 to 2001. He sold winning tickets to people who then scored big, illegitimate money prizes and paid him a $45,000 or $50,000 kickback. Documentary makers James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte uncover how Jacobson operated – running his national scam undetected, rigging the game, and leaving McDonald’s real burger-buying customers scant chances of winning. The scheme unraveled when an informant tipped off the FBI. If you work in security – or just relish a wild and true business saga, complete with the Mafia and millions of dollars – you’ll enjoy this cautionary tale of scams, corporate security failures, and family feuds.

Take-Aways

• From 1989 to 2001, few legitimate winners took the top prizes in McDonald’s Monopoly-style promotional game. Most of the money went to fraudsters.
• Jerome Jacobson, chief of security at the company that ran the game, emerged as a suspected source of stolen game pieces.
• Jacobson recruited “winners” of high-value game pieces through Mafioso Jerry Colombo.
• Information from arrested suspects led to the indictments of fraudulent winners.
• Jacobson pled guilty to stealing many of McDonald’s big prize-winning game tokens.

Summary

From 1989 to 2001, few legitimate winners took the top prizes in McDonald’s Monopoly-style promotional game. Most of the money went to fraudsters.

In March 2001, federal prosecutor Mark Devereaux, a special assistant US Attorney, contacted Rob Holm, head of global security for the McDonald’s Corporation based in Chicago. Without saying why, Devereaux asked Holm to come to the Jacksonville, Florida, office of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

McDonald’s head of marketing and head of legal went with Holm to Jacksonville, where he and Devereaux met with three agents in an FBI conference room. Devereaux started writing names on a whiteboard, nearly filling it. Holm recognized none of them. Devereaux told him these people had won top prizes in McDonald’s Monopoly-style promotional game. The prizes for the winning game pieces included cars, jet skis, Super Bowl trips, and cash awards from $25,000 to $1 million. The listed surnames were all different – but, as Devereaux explained, the people were all related by marriage or otherwise linked.

Investigators ultimately found that from 1989 to 2001, almost every top-prize winner had claimed prizes using stolen game pieces. Everyone else who held game pieces from McDonald’s – including actual fast-food customers – had a nearly zero chance of winning.

Devereaux wanted McDonald’s to keep running the game to assist the investigation. After Holm returned to Chicago and conferred with then-CEO Jack Greenberg, he told Devereaux that McDonald’s would cooperate. The company would run one more round of the game from April through June 2001.

Jerome Jacobson, chief of security at the company that ran the game, emerged as a suspected source of stolen game pieces.

FBI special agent J.D. “Doug” Mathews, 29, longed for an exciting undercover assignment, but his training was in accounting. After he joined the FBI, he went to work in the office in Jacksonville, focusing on insurance fraud. Rick Dent supervised Mathews. In March 2001, Mathews asked about a Post-it note belonging to Dent that showed a phone number and the question, “McDonald’s Monopoly fraud?” Dent dismissively said that the query came from an informant who called a civilian tip line. Sensing Dent’s lack of enthusiasm, an intrigued Mathews explained the game: Participants typically pulled a tab off a McDonald’s box or cup, then read it to see if they’d won a top prize – or, at least, free French fries.

“The winners all agree to participate in whatever promotional events McDonald’s comes up with to publicize the company, the game, whatever. That means showing their faces and doing televised promos.”

Responding to what he calls his “fun meter,” Mathews interviewed the tip-line informant for details, including participants’ names and the dates of the fraud allegations. He learned that three of the game’s​​ $1 million winners were either related or local. Despite claiming other addresses, they’d obtain their winning game pieces from an “Uncle Jerry.”

Now, phone records suggested that Uncle Jerry might be Jerome Jacobson, head of security at Simon Marketing, which ran the Monopoly game for McDonald’s. Jacobson had been a police officer in Hollywood, Florida. Before joining Simon in the late 1980s, he had worked at Dittler Brothers, a facility that prints lottery tickets and McDonald’s game pieces.

When Holm, the security chief for McDonald’s, initially inspected Simon Marketing and Dittler Brothers, he’d been impressed by their level of security. But after the Jacksonville meeting, he knew he was dealing with an entirely unexpected breach.

In April, Doug Mathews proposed an undercover operation to his FBI colleagues. He suggested inviting the illegitimate big winners to a Las Vegas gathering that McDonald’s would sponsor, and then arresting them. Dent and other agents objected. Instead, the FBI began monitoring the winners, beginning with Michael Hoover, who had pocketed $1 million. Since McDonald’s required winners to participate in activities such as TV promos, Mathews suggested that a group of FBI agents could pose as a video production crew from “Shamrock Productions” to film a check presentation to Hoover.

The head of publicity at McDonald’s, Amy Murray, who handled the Monopoly winners, joined the crew – a rare civilian in an FBI sting. On camera, Hoover apprehensively told a false story about finding a winning game piece in a magazine. The FBI decided the Shamrock crew should tape other winners telling their stories.

Jacobson recruited “winners” of high-value game pieces through Mafioso Jerry Colombo.

In 1995, a McDonald’s TV ad for the Monopoly game showed a heavyset man who had won a Dodge Viper. The smiling winner, Gennaro “Jerry” Colombo, was a member of one of New York City’s five Italian Mafia families. His marriage to Robin Fisher, a non-Italian, had already stirred tension within his family.

After Jerry and Robin failed to name their first child after Jerry’s paternal grandfather, his outraged parents ended all contact until Robin agreed to change the boy’s name from Gennaro Colombo Jr. to Francesco Gennaro “Frankie” Colombo. Jerry got a winning game piece from Colombo family member “Uncle Dominic,” and opted to take the prize’s $53,000 cash value.

Before he died, Uncle Dominic told Jerry Colombo that the game pieces came from Jerry Jacobson. The two Jerrys became partners, and trusted Robin to keep their affiliation secret.

“While the winners could claim a million dollars, the reality was that the company paid that out in increments of $50,000 over 20 years.”

After videotaping Hoover, FBI-run Shamrock Productions contacted Jacksonville resident Gloria Brown, a Black woman in her 40s, for an interview. On camera, she showed little emotion as she claimed that she’d been staying with friends in Hilton Head, South Carolina, when she found a $1 million-winning game piece at a McDonald’s there.

Winner William “Buddy” Fisher sweated through his taping from the pressure of lying about how he’d won $1 million in the game. Fisher’s favorite among his three children was Robin, who had married Jerry Colombo, whom Fisher disdained. Robin got her parents to accept Jerry and his family by arranging for Jerry to give her father a winning game piece. Fisher reluctantly accepted it and claimed a $1 million prize.

In late April, the Jacksonville FBI office was bustling as the McDonald’s fraud case unfolded. The FBI requested judicial authorization to tap the phones of Jerry Jacobson and 14 other people with apparent connections to him. In addition to wiretapping Jacobson, FBI agents were conducting nonstop surveillance. They had not yet linked Jacobson to Jerry Colombo, who was selling winning game pieces for half of the cash prize. With McDonald’s paying its $1 million prizes in annual installments of $50,000 over 20 years, Colombo would collect $25,000 a year from each fake winner.

In 1998, Jerry Colombo was managing an illegal gambling operation in South Carolina, but wanted legitimate work. He opened a strip club, with no nudity, that he called Fuzzy Bunny’s. The Charleston County government refused to allow a strip club at the location he proposed. Colombo posted a portable sign there: “The Church of Fuzzy Bunny’s, Mass 7 Nights a Week, Preacher Wanted.” The stunt attracted media coverage that upset Jacobson, who complained to Robin Colombo about her attention-seeking husband.

Jerry and Robin argued. One day, just as he was criticizing how she drove her Ford Explorer with little Frankie in his car seat, an 18-wheel truck crashed into the passenger side of the Ford. Robin and Frankie had no life-threatening injuries. Jerry was hurt, but expected to survive. Four days later, though, as his internal bleeding persisted, his family took Jerry off life support. They blamed Robin for his death. She attempted suicide, and started to use narcotics. After Robin’s incarceration for fraud, Frankie lived with his paternal grandparents, “Nana and Nano” Colombo, who tried to turn him against his troubled mother.

Information from arrested suspects led to the indictments of fraudulent winners.

In 1998, Andrew “A.J.” Glomb was seeking adventure after moving from Pittsburgh to Miami. He met his friend Don Hart in Orlando, where Hart gave him a McDonald’s Monopoly piece worth $1 million, with the understanding that Glomb would split the money with him. Glomb became a trusted recruiter of Monopoly “winners” for Jerry Jacobson.

“For A.J., this McDonald’s Monopoly thing was a fun little caper, a side hustle, where he could help some of his friends and put a little play money in his pocket.”

By August, the FBI was ready to arrest eight suspects. Then someone mistakenly faxed a 30-page report with details of the planned arrests to the Greenville News in Greenville, South Carolina. Devereaux successfully pleaded with the paper to report the pending arrests only after they occurred. On August 19, 2001, FBI agents arrested A.J. Glomb, Gloria Brown, Michael Hoover, and Jerry Jacobson. Robin Colombo was in jail for credit card fraud when the FBI informed her about the arrests. Agents told Robin that failing to cooperate would jeopardize her custody of her son. Robin cooperated.

The eight suspects, who had collected $13 million in prizes, shared information with the FBI in hopes of lenient sentences. That led to the indictments of 53 people in 23 states on charges of fraudulently trying to collect $24 million from McDonald’s. News coverage of the arrests and accusations initially surged, then nearly disappeared after the September 11 terrorist attacks took over the headlines.

Jacobson pled guilty to stealing many of McDonald’s big prize-winning game tokens.

When Jerry Jacobson led security at Simon Marketing, he worked closely with company accountant Hilda Bennett. She’d travel with Jacobson when he transported Monopoly game pieces in a briefcase that he handcuffed to his wrist. Security protocol prohibited them from being apart, but she did not follow him into airport bathrooms. Hidden in a bathroom stall, Jacobson would open the two locks on the briefcase.

The sealed envelope inside held as many as 50 Monopoly game pieces, including one exchangeable for a top prize. Jacobson would steal them and replace them with the same number of “common” pieces, good for no more than free fries. Then he would reseal the envelope, relock the briefcase, and exit the airport bathroom within minutes.

“Ma Colombo never expected her call to the FBI would kick off an investigation into what was a nationwide scam.”

In all, 46 of the 53 indicted people pleaded guilty, including Jacobson. A jury trial for the remaining seven defendants began in August 2022. Jacobson, a witness for the prosecution, explained how he had stolen the top-prize game pieces. He testified that he stole and sold as many as 60 pieces that McDonald’s had cashed. For each, the “winner” paid him kickbacks of $45,000 or $50,000. He said his net income during the 10 years he was fixing the game totaled $3 million. The trial did not expose the identity of the confidential informant who had first called the FBI to report the Monopoly fraud. Mathews and Dent declined to disclose the informant’s name.

It was Robin who admitted that the confidential informant had been “Ma” Colombo, mother of the late Jerry Colombo and his brother Frank. Mrs. Colombo had never accepted Robin as Jerry’s wife or as the mother of Frankie, her grandson. She wanted to make sure she gained custody of Frankie by implicating Robin and Jerry in the Monopoly scam. When she called the FBI, Ma Colombo did not know the scope of the investigation she would trigger – or the number of people, including those in her own family, who had participated in the long-running nationwide fraud.

About the Authors

James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte are multi-Emmy nominated filmmakers, Signal Award-winning podcasters, and co-founders of the TV and film production company, FunMeter