
How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions - DLay
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions?via=twitter_page
======
kevinmchugh
My aunt worked for Simon Marketing for many years. She was a designer. My
cousin was pictured on a fry box once. All of their drinking glasses were
McDonald's promos, much like a software developer's swag t-shirt collection.
They had these Mickey Mouse glasses I loved but that had a habit of shattering
into a million pieces under the slightest thermal shock or bump. She had a
full collection of the 101 Dalmatians Happy Meals toys. We were all sure
that'd be worth a lot of money some day. Looks like it's worth 50-100 USD on
ebay now.

She lost her job, since this racket destroyed Simon Marketing.

~~~
riazrizvi
Too bad for Simon Marketing. It raises an interesting question from a
business's point of view. Who can you trust in a situation like this.
Personally I would only trust a security expert to provide expert guidance but
not have them do any execution. They would seem to me to be the least
trustworthy, simply because they have had a professional lifetime of
temptation and rumination.

~~~
Spooky23
You setup internal controls to separate duties and have different
organizational silos and discourage fraternization.

Then you audit the process and the work often.

~~~
mrfredward
The complete lack of internal audits was something that struck me about this
story. Million dollar game pieces constantly disappearing, and no one in the
company was in a position to notice anything was wrong.

~~~
crtasm
They didn't disappear, it appeared that he'd put them on the packages as
expected and then people won the prizes as expected.

------
danso
> _The colorful court case, held in Jacksonville, Florida, started September
> 10, 2001, the day before terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade
> Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The stunned news media
> quickly forgot about the McDonald’s trial, which explains why so few
> Americans remember the scandal, or how it ended._

In the months/years after 9/11 I remember that a recurring theme in longform
stories was that their events took place shortly before or after 9/11 and had
collectively been forgotten. One that I still remember is a Sports Illustrated
feature about 8 Wyoming college cross-country runners who died in the worst
vehicle crash in Wyoming history [0]. Though maybe in today's 24/7+ media
cycle and attention deficits, plenty of interesting stories slip through the
cracks on a more regular basis.

[0] [https://www.si.com/vault/2001/11/26/314466/cross-road-
after-...](https://www.si.com/vault/2001/11/26/314466/cross-road-after-a-road-
trip-to-celebrate-their-bonding-as-a-team-eight-university-of-wyoming-runners-
made-the-fateful-choice-to-head-home-on-the-states-most-treacherous-highway)

~~~
jMyles
Rainbow Farm. Never forget.

[http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking/Rainbow.html](http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking/Rainbow.html)

I have a friend who was there during this terrible incident.

------
mabbo
There's a wonderful lesson in all of this to any current or future business
owner: what is the minimum number of people in your organization that would
need to secretly be dishonest to undermine what you do? And how much money is
on the line encouraging those people to consider it?

In this case, the answer was one, and the amount of money was millions of
dollars. Should we be surprised that it happened?

~~~
lisper
This is not an academic question. How many dishonest Apple employes would it
take to insert a secret back door into MacOS, iOS, or iCloud?

~~~
paulpauper
a backdoor into a bitcoin app/wallet would be far more lucrative and easier to
pull off (not that I am giving ideas). Icloud is mostly family pics and
useless stuff like that. May as well go for where the money is.

~~~
Latteland
but wasn't icloud where those people were stealing nudes from celebrity
accounts?

------
cwmma
> Not long afterward, Jacobson opened a package sent to him by mistake from a
> supplier in Hong Kong. Inside he found a set of the anti-tamper seals for
> the game piece envelopes—the only thing he needed to steal game pieces en
> route to the factory.

While most people are focusing on the lack of human controls that allowed
there to be a single person who could pull this off, I think an over looked
issue was the over reliance on these tamper resistant seals. They had a single
type of seal from a single supplier that was apparently used by itself to show
tamper resistance.

This is actually less secure then the setup at the Starbucks I worked at where
the tamper resistant bags had serial numbers on both the body of the bag and
on a removable tag, so that if somebody was to open the bag (which you could
only do by ripping it) and put it in a new bag, the serial number would no
longer match.

~~~
lbriner
Yeah and the fact that the supplier of the seals didn't contact Simon
Marketing and say, "sorry, we seem to have mislaid a load of seals so we need
to change the design/colour and send you some more".

------
nathanaldensr
A well-written and well-sourced article. I found it quite interesting. It's
amazing how people seem to find a way around any regulation or control to
satisfy basic greed.

~~~
roywiggins
The game itself is basically a thinly veiled scam anyway: "McDonald’s makes
one piece from each set of properties extremely rare, so while thousands have
three of the four railroads, the odds of pulling the Short Line Railroad—and
winning a PT Cruiser—were 1 in 150 million."

Sure, it's all written down in the rules somewhere but it's an elaborate
effort to disguise the actual odds of winning to get people to buy more
cheeseburgers. You think you are 3 quarters of the way to a PT Cruiser when
you are in fact barely more likely to get it that you were before you got the
first three.

~~~
greedo
The odds of winning a free hashbrown, Big Mac, or Egg McMuffin were pretty
decent. Most people with have a clue realized that they didn't really have a
chance to win $1M.

~~~
panda530
This is very similar to Safeway's Monopoly game started 4 or 5 years ago. The
first year I had every category on the board filled in all except for the
final piece. After that I would get the tickets but I knew my chances of
winning anything were slim to none & would often forget to open them.

One thing I think is interesting is they allow employees to play but they have
a different color for their tickets, which for consumers are handed out at the
cash register based on certain items bought. I'm guessing this is to keep
employees from taking a huge stash of tickets home at the end of a shift.

~~~
jandrese
I've played that game three times and ended up with tons of tickets each time
because my wife shops their for her classes. I've never won so much as the $5
Safeway Gift Certificate from the board. I'm not entirely sure that game is on
the up and up.

The coupons are sometimes alright. We've got a huge collection of small cans
of tomato sauce and small boxes of tissues. The online second chance thing is
mostly a scam too sadly. You basically win entries into a sweepstakes for
movie/tickets or a cruise. You can win $5 Fandango tickets, but it's a royal
hassle to redeem them. You can also win gas points, but I'm not sure they
redeem properly. It takes hundreds of dollars of purchases to even get the
single gas point on average.

The whole thing is mostly a waste of time. The other promotion they do where
you can earn up points to buy cookware is a lot better. Got a decent pot and a
usable knife out of that last time.

------
ocdtrekkie
It's mostly just shocking to me there isn't more separation of duties amongst
a few people. The fact that one guy could pull this off suggests some major
failure to consider single points of failure. He did allegedly have someone
with him, but they didn't even sit in the same place on the plane!

The mark of a good security expert is that they will tell you the threat they
themselves, potentially, are. (This is true for IT as well.)

~~~
robmcm
There also seems to be zero analysis of the winners. Simple analytics would
have raised concerns early on.

I guess the company just didn’t care, as long as someone won and the marketing
worked.

~~~
40four
I think McDonald's could have cared less. They made & continue to make $$$
hand over fist with these promotions. The marketing for sure worked, whether
anyone won or not. I used to play these games & I never remember hearing about
any real winners. Didn't keep me from the dream of pulling one of those
instant winners. People get excited for games of chance and it drives large
amounts of traffic into stores.

McDonald's counts those millions good as gone when they start the promotion,
but it's worth it since they assuredly get a huge return on the investment.
They assumed Simon marketing was doing their job, and we shouldn't be
surprised they didn't care to look analyze the integrity of the game. They
were selling truckloads of Big Macs & Mcnuggets and that all that really
matters to them.

Any-who... great writing, and interesting look into to a "game" I'm sure most
of us have a connection to. Pretty amazing it was hijacked by a few people for
so long. Really enjoyed this read!

~~~
ballenf
There is some irony in the criminals paying restitution to the company who was
making so much money from the game to be incentivized to turn a blind eye.

Running the last game that was known ahead of time to be rigged seems
indefensible. The article doesn’t challenge the position that catching the
crooks is a good reason to defraud more people.

------
dtf
"Before each bi-annual game, Jacobson arrived at the drab Dittler Brothers’
office at 5 a.m to observe their Omega III supercomputer making the McDonald’s
prize draw."

Does anyone know what the 'Omega III supercomputer' is?

~~~
tonyarkles
It's a trickier one to find information on! Apparently it was made by Control
Data Corp in 1979+. I'll edit this comment if I find more... I'm curious too!

Edit: It's pretty hard to find anything about it! Apparently the University of
Georgia had one too, but I'm giving up now and getting back to work :)

Edit 2: Apparently it was IBM (360?) compatible:
[https://it.unt.edu/sites/default/files/benchmarks-01-1980.pd...](https://it.unt.edu/sites/default/files/benchmarks-01-1980.pdf)

~~~
dtf
Great work! So I guess it's this CDC Omega / 480 Model III, as described in
this March 1979 Computerworld?

[https://imgur.com/a/8TKIqNN](https://imgur.com/a/8TKIqNN)

(edit: and here's a manual I found for the Model I. Does indeed sound like a
System/360 compatible.
[http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/omega480/22291359A_OMEGA_48...](http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/omega480/22291359A_OMEGA_480_Functional_Characteristics_May77.pdf))

------
chiefalchemist
There was a similar story a couple months ago about the insider who rigged the
lottery. I'm sorry, I don't recall the source.

In any case, the ones who get caught are done in by carelessness, and over-
confidence. You have to wonder how many are not getting caught if they can
manage these two faults.

~~~
bb2018
A judge in NH recently ruled that the winner of the lottery doesn't need to
come forward and be a part of lottery press and therefore their name does not
need to be released. The reasoning is good on the surface that people who just
won a life changing amount of money shouldn't have to have their personal
details flashed on the news.

However, it seems like being named in public is the best way to prevent fraud.
Many of these scams are through second counsins' friends and weird sources.
Now an insider could just go through their best friend and no one would ever
be able to connect the dots.

~~~
makomk
Depends which kinds of fraud you care about. Being named in public as a
lottery winner is a pretty good way of making someone the target of every
fraudster, con artist and swindler in the area.

~~~
eric_h
Indeed. Anonymous collection protects the winner, public collection protects
the game.

------
smileypete
Bit of trivia: the monopoly character was said to be based on Samuel Insull
who became Edison's private secretary and right hand man.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=monopoly+game+%22samuel+insu...](https://www.google.com/search?q=monopoly+game+%22samuel+insull%22)

Having successfully argued for the creation of regulated utility monopolies,
he assembled a huge empire which subsequently collapsed in the Great Crash of
1929, investors and indeed himself were wiped out...

~~~
yareally
Hmm, I had also heard the Monopoly Guy was based on JP Morgan (at least in
looks), but I could be incorrect.

~~~
ibn_ibid
>Monopoly Guy

His name is Rich Uncle Pennybags

~~~
eric_h
I would argue that he is more commonly known as Monopoly Guy - as this is the
first I've heard "Rich Uncle Pennybags", and I first played Monopoly ~30 years
ago.

~~~
jfoutz
you can be the citation on the wiki article!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Uncle_Pennybags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Uncle_Pennybags)

------
newsbinator
> "The camera crew listened patiently to his rambling story, silently
> recognizing the inconsequential details found in stories told by liars."

I'd love to learn more about this. How do you separate inconsequential details
told by liars from inconsequential details told by excited people?

~~~
trendia
Liars provide more details because they get bogged down in the story, whereas
truth-tellers give you a broad overview and can still provide a coherent story
when pressed for details.

One study found this by analyzing insurance claims [0]

[0]
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316234/How-s...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316234/How-
spot-liar-Their-story-far-detailed-true.html)

~~~
misiti3780
i just finished Never Split The Difference ([https://www.amazon.com/Never-
Split-Difference-Negotiating-De...](https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-
Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/0062407805)) and they also tend use
different pronouns (they do not use I as much, but use other pronouns more
often)

~~~
barking
This accords with a recent a high profile rape case in the UK involving rugby
players where the defence barrister was questioning the alleged victim's
account because she kept using 'you' rather than 'I' when describing her
behaviour during the alleged rape. (The players were found not guilty in court
but not on media and social media and were fired.)

~~~
mjohn
Or perhaps she found the experience traumatic and wanted to disassociate
herself when describing the events? It's dangerous to read too much into how
people describe traumatic experiences.

~~~
barking
I agree with you and yet people are convicted based on the basis of one
person's word against another's all the time.

------
herodotus
> When Jacobson revealed his scam, Hart, an honest businessman, found it too
> good to be true. But he agreed to try it, to “see if it worked,” recalled
> Jacobson.

I think I might have to revise my understanding of what it means to be an
honest businessman.

It is depressing to me that greed so easily trumps morality.

~~~
duxup
Morality is easy to talk about. Being tested is hard.

~~~
agumonkey
It sleeps a bit like a shoe horn. Bit by bit shifting your perspective.

------
gnicholas
> _Jacobson’s $70,000 salary was six times his police officer’s pay_

How is this possible?

~~~
bena
The 80's. Minimum wage was around $2.65 or $5512/yr. He was making roughly
twice minimum wage at the time.

Even then, in 1988, that $70,000 salary was pretty good. That's the equivalent
of $149,000 today. (Or $52,000 in 1981 when he was a cop).

~~~
gnicholas
Perhaps the police pay is just the base, not including overtime or hazard pay
that make up much of an officer’s total compensation.

~~~
Phlarp
Not to mention official and unofficial benefits; health care and a police
pension obviously, but also running drugs on the side, free prostitutes,
bribes, immunity from other police, and near absolute power over other
individuals in the regular course of your job.

Not all of these still exist today, but many do.

------
fatjokes
They rigged it against Canada? Can Canadians file a class-action lawsuit?

~~~
dccoolgai
Yeah, for me - across the board of the entire story - the most alarming thing
is that there seems to be little blowback against McDonalds for this.
Considering how much that promotion was "worth" to them and how much business
they got because of it, they lost almost nothing for misrepresenting the
chances of winning to their customers (which they could have prevented if they
were a little more careful). If I were a McDonalds exec, the unfortunate moral
I would draw from this is to rig the game for myself next time, because it
doesn't hurt the company at all, really.

------
gojomo
I am less-than-half-joking when I say this sort of cheating could be prevented
by:

McDonald's Monopoly on a Blockchain

~~~
fullshark
All the sweepstakes promotions I see now involve entering some unique ID code
online, which makes them much less fun I think.

~~~
UncleEntity
Yep, the last time I even cared about one of those games you had to text in
the number to see if you won anything and twice in a row they came back as
"already entered", think the employees were doing it in their spare time since
it was just printed on the outside of the box.

Had I known the FBI cared about these things...

~~~
caf
Yeah the last one of those I tried did the same thing.

------
xycodex
How was this promotion not regulated? Sounds a lot like lootcrates.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
It's been a long time since I've looked into this, but things like this
generally are regulated (in the US). The sweepstakes promoter generally must
post the odds of winning, and can't actually require a purchase of a product
to enter (though you might need to pay return postage and wait 2-4 weeks for
the free entry option). Some states have stricter requirements and you'll
often see nationally advertised sweepstakes specify that they're not offered
to residents of those states.

~~~
caminante
To this point, one guy mailed ~100 letters to McDonalds asking for monopoly
pieces. McDs had to reply with game pieces.

------
meandthree
I knew one winner. She won an Oldsmobile in 1988. Interesting enough, she was
a Mormon so and had to ask permission from her elders to claim the prize. This
was in Minnesota.

~~~
johnsonjo
Mormon here. Hope your friend wasn’t connected to this Baker fellow ;). Seems
a little odd to me though that she needed to ask permission from anyone in the
Mormon church to claim a prize. Normaly the only person you would be expected
to talk to is your Bishop and that is under the circumstances of a large
enough sin. You can seek guidance and counsel from the Bishop, however this is
not expected.

By the way random facts, but we prefer calling ourselves and being called
members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS Church)
instead of Mormons. Mormon was the name of an ancient American prophet-
historian who abridged records of other prophets into a book of scripture
which would later be called The Book of Mormon. We by no means worship Mormon,
but instead Christ that’s why we prefer the other name.

------
js2
Unless I missed it, we never found out who the informant was.

~~~
jaxn
I think it was implied to be the mob wife's angry in-laws.

------
bsimpson
I found this funnier than I probably should have:

> a disgraced Ronald McDonald actor who was convicted of making harassing
> phone calls while posing as the clown

~~~
jessaustin
What was the source of the disgrace?

------
lpolovets
A fun-to-read-about (but not illegal) sweepstakes hack was done by a bunch of
Caltech students in the 70s. Coincidentally, McDonald's was the target there,
too.
[http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_caltech_sweepstakes_...](http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_caltech_sweepstakes_caper)

------
chaostheory
This type of scam can probably be much easier to spot with Facebook.

Any lottery game or house raffle with little transparency should be suspect.

------
dandigangi
I remember working on a Monopoly game knockoff for Buddig meat at one of my
first dev jobs. I wish we had put in nearly the same effort to protect the
game as MCDs did. We had some "situations" also. Not this bad though.

------
jedberg
McDonalds was dumb for entrusting the security of this system to one person.
This is like security 101. If you want good physical security, you can't trust
it to a single person.

~~~
baud147258
There was an auditor following him, except in the bathroom, where he was doing
the switch.

~~~
jedberg
Right but the auditor was only an observer, not part of the process. You need
to have two people be active participants.

------
flashman
Jacobson sent a $1m winning ticket to a hospital, where the donations clerk
immediately turned it in. Imagine what would have happened if she'd decided to
keep it for herself? I wonder whether and how Jacobson would have taken steps
to expose her, without exposing himself.

------
keithnz
I often wonder with the McMonopoly prize thing how often they pay out, from my
observation quite a number of people just threw out their tickets, so it
seemed like there was a good chance they didn't have to payout

------
partiallypro
I am pretty sure the only way you -can- win the Monopoly game is to rig it in
your favor. It's not a game anyone is meant to win. That's likely why so much
is spent trying to figure out how someone won. The only prizes anyone is meant
to win are maybe an Xbox and free chicken McNuggets. In some ways I sympathize
with the idea of playing the unwinnable system against itself.

~~~
batiudrami
If you know which of the three or four tickets are scarce (something that
could easily be determined by a few enthusiasts online by collating their
ticket data), winning a grand prize is as simple as buying more McDonalds
until you have the tickets to complete the set. The trick is that most people
who receive the rare tickets won't know and will either bin them or not obtain
the remaining tickets.

------
vectorEQ
ripping off one big corporate via a game named to a big banker. classic. they
should give this man a medal!

------
kdazzle
Good story, but man, I think this story sucked up like 30% of my battery, and
the ads didn't even load half the time.

------
linkmotif
Now we know who orchestrated 9/11: it was McDonalds.

Great piece. I somehow missed all this too in the 9/11 aftermath.

------
halis
Nice!

------
optiflex
I came across a situation where an asset protection head at a Walmart was
looking the other way while an acquaintance would dress up in a suit, and put
an expensive vacuum cleaner in a shopping cart and waltz out the car
departments side door minutes after it opened each morning. An employee
noticed this. Asked the person for a receipt and the scam came to an end. The
employee, however, got wrote up by the asset protection head!He claimed he was
just about to apprehend this fellow. But Walmart quickly ended their
relationship with their asset protection head(Within weeks), while NOT GOING
BACK TO THE SIMPLE EMPLOYEE and admitting any wrong in his being written up.
This is why when people rob these huge corporations like this, nobody should
care. They don't give 2 craps about honesty or integrity. They are more
worried about a thief falling down, breaking an ankle, suing them for
millions, than you helping them not lose assets.

------
optiflex
I stopped reading the article as soon as they got to the part about him
checking all the employees and even following them into the bathroom(Illegal
BTW). This is why police departments have INTERNAL AFFAIRS DEPT. Just like
pedophiles find a position of trust to prey upon kids, really accomplished
scammers find one to take advantage of security. Where would a better position
be than to head up the security! When they started giving examples of him
check shoes, it reminded me that in my lifetime I realized the worse thieves
are always worried about getting robbed! Because they figure if they thought
of it, so haven't others. I was reading before that about all his ailments
prior and thinking, the author hasn't figured out those were scams ..too!

