The Gist of It
A man named Jerome Jacobson swindled more than $24 million out of the most popular fast-food chain in the world. And he did it for over 12 years! How? He had a trick: stealing and selling McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces. Jacobson’s fortune and failure revolved around the twice-a-year Monopoly game promotion, which promised customers anything from a free sandwich to a million dollars.
Source: HBO
All you needed was a lucky game piece. And Jacobson had a bunch of them. Through most of the ‘90s, he pocketed the pieces and sold them to a huge and intricate network of friends and distant relatives. His intentions might have been to help them, but in the end, more than 50 people were convicted in the scheme.