Original subtitles

Somebody offers you a million dollars, you're going to take it.

Unless you've got to kill somebody, then you might not be interested.

One of the early middlemen was Jerry Colombo. In order to do this scam, Jerry

Jacobson started finding other middlemen, A .J. Blum and Dwight Baker.

We were up on Dwight's phone. We start to figure out, is there anything with

this person, George Chandler? Yeah, there might be something there.

Dwight came to me with the million -dollar winning ticket. He asked me

be interested in buying the ticket from him and then redeeming. So I did it.

He didn't need to have any knowledge of anything.

I tried to protect him from the truth of it.

One day, Jerry told me there was a half -a -million -dollar game piece, and I

wanted it. I made arrangements with my wife's sister, Brenda, to split it. She

turned in the game piece and decided that she was going to run with the

Did you try to stop her? Yeah.

So we found out that Dwight Baker made a phone call to Brenda Phoenix. Didn't

quite disconnect the phone. He's following her to the airport.

There was a lot of concern on that. What are we going to do if they are really

going to harm her? Have to intervene, but one little slip up could shut it

My name is Jerry Jacobson, and my father is Jerry Jerome Jacobson.

Come here, boys.

Come here.

Bailey, come here.

A group in Miami, Florida. Once my mom got divorced from him, he cut all ties.

I was three years old when they got divorced.

So this is a picture of me as a baby with my dad and my mom's dad.

My mom called, had him arrested for back child support when I was 13, and that's

when he popped on the radar.

That's when I really met him for the first time.

During the summer, I would go fly up to Atlanta and go spend, you know, three or

four weeks up there with him, kind of getting to know him a little bit. I

believe he was living with Allison.

This is actually a picture of the wedding party when my dad and Linda got

married.

That's my mom in the picture with me and him.

I think it's one of the only pictures I have with the three of us together.

My mom, Carol Cody.

I was his

third marriage.

Really, I was his fourth.

Out of, I think we counted seven.

Wait a minute.

Phyllis, Carol, Daryl, me.

Allison and Linda. He's been married six times, and if he was married with that

marriage license down in Miami, it's seven.

The very first time I got the first text about the possibility of a documentary

series, within two minutes, I got a phone call

saying, hey, if anybody calls or talks to you or...

wants to talk about this thing, don't do it.

Obviously, I'm not going to call him and ask permission to do this with you

guys. I think this is my way of...

my way of having maybe a little bit of closure.

This is definitely going to put the nail in the coffin for our relationship.

I mean, what I'm okay with.

I tried to keep her mouth shut, but it didn't work.

I knew that I had to do something.

She was gonna run with the money.

No. I didn't threaten to kill her.

I just told my wife, I said, we can't do this in the airport.

I meant we can't confront her in the airport.

I didn't mean anything other than we cannot confront her in the airport.

It turned out to be a misunderstanding, but you still have to run it out to make

sure.

You know, the long and short of it is it wasn't a valid threat.

Right after that, my wife took her sister to the bank to cash the check and

attached to the hips with her until she did the right thing with the money.

Yeah.

So after that airport drama, we started to focus on Dwight even more.

So we're up on these wiretaps.

and Rick and I hear something's happening with Uncle Jerry.

A phone call was intercepted between Jacobson and Dwight Baker.

The conversation was that Jacobson and Dwight were going to meet for the

exchange of a winning piece.

That exchange was going to happen somewhere in Georgia.

And they say on the phone, I'll be there in an hour or an hour and 15 minutes or

something like that. We had that window.

They didn't name the place where they were going to meet, but they gave hints.

The usual place, you mean along the highway? Yeah, along the highway.

So we hurried up, we got on the map, and we figured out that it was somewhere

along 85 near Atlanta.

We had a certain area, but we didn't know.

I mean, we thought, but we weren't sure.

So I got on the phone with Atlanta to tell them, hey, this is what's coming

So they were queued up and ready. They mobilized quick.

They had to get there and get visual.

I mean, we had air support, surveillance group down in their cars. We're looking

at rest areas, places on the side of the road, everywhere it was on.

I remember looking at this golf resort north of Atlanta.

It's got to be this place.

It seems to be about halfway. It's got to be.

Where would you guys meet? Did you go to his house?

Met at his house one time.

He sat there with Ilan at a winery between here and there. It's halfway.

Sometimes we'd eat. Sometimes we'd just sit in the car and trade money and game

pieces.

Yeah.

We actually had an FBI pilot up in the air and could actually see Mr.

Jacobson handing.

Mr. Baker, something in a folder.

There it was.

And off they go.

The video evidence speaks volumes of the illegal acts that they're doing. It's

pretty short.

But, Sweet, we got to know.

It was about the end of the summer, and the game is ending.

We weren't going to have another game.

We already have identified Jerry.

We had identified Mr.

Baker and Fair Play. We had identified Mr.

We had identified and videoed Mr.

Hoover, and we had several others.

All right, Devereaux's good.

He's laying out the indictment, the arrest warrant. We're going to take this

through the grand jury, get the true bills, which is the indictment, and

going to go out and effect these arrests.

In this case, the charges were conspiracy and...

Mail fraud.

If you use the United States mail in furtherance of a scheme in artifice to

defraud, that's penalized by up to 20 years in prison.

The initial stage was the indictment of the first eight. So the first thing that

was going to make the news, that was going to alert all the other winners

hey, the gig is over, was the end of August, August 21st.

Everybody was spread across the country, and so we ended up having to request

the assistance of numerous offices spread entirely across the United

You have to provide those agents enough information to make arrests.

So, in anticipation of the takedown, we had prepared a very, very lengthy

communication. So it's our whole plan.

The background of the investigation, I mean, this communication was probably 20

or 30 pages long.

Very, very specific.

In -depth. Puts you right there, like everything.

We faxed it, and I'm not going to say who did it. I'll say I didn't, but there

may have been somebody I know very closely that did it that would deny it.

Doesn't matter who it was, but...

On the speed dial, which I never used speed dial, but the agent sending that

plan thought that the speed dial, in fact, said Greenville FBI, when in fact

said the Greenville News.

It ends up being probably the worst person in the world, a news agency.

Now this is a big issue now, right? Like all the stuff out there. Now you've got

people that might be waiting on agents to come arrest them and all this. It's

bad, bad, bad.

Rick Dent's big head was sweating bad.

Devereux was sweating it. Chris Graham was losing weight over that.

I remember being really, really angry about it. Like, you know, how in the

world, you know, how could this happen?

You know, now it's... How do we fix it? How do we keep them from going with the

story? After all this work, this could really screw things up.

My name is John Boynosky. In 2001, I was a reporter for the Greenville News.

I had been there about six or seven months, and I was a crime and courts

reporter.

So anything that, you know, kind of bad happened, you know, anything that had

anything official -looking document that came across the facts would come to my

desk.

So I came in on a Monday morning, and there was a stapled thing on my chair.

And I picked it up, and I thought, FBI on it.

Three paragraphs in, I'm thinking, this doesn't sound right. This is an open

investigation. Like, they're talking about surveillance in here? And I'm

at first, like, oh, it's the background. I'm like... No.

And I start flipping through all surveillance stuff and like background

information. I'm like, I don't think this is supposed to be going to John

Oski in the Greenville News.

I remember I turned around my chair and I got my boss. I'm like, Dave, did you

look at this? Like, where did this come from? He's like, yeah, I kind of looked

at him like, Dave, I think we have an open FBI investigation.

He's like, what? And we start looking at it. His eyes kind of go like this.

I'm 24 years old. I'm trying to make my name for myself. I want to write a

story. I'm like, we have, you know.

Exclusive, you know, McDonald's investigation, FBI look into a big fraud

So Mark Devereux's first response was, jump in the Bureau plane, slide down to

South Carolina.

Each office surveillance squad has usually a Cessna 160 or something. If

were ever in a Volkswagen bug in the early 70s, it's like a lawnmower in the

sky.

I'm looking at that going, no way in hell I want to be part of that again,

And Devereux.

Being in that controlled -ass environment with him in a Tide bottle,

only way you got to pee. Can you imagine that? I mean, that's an awful situation

to be in.

Literally, we get in a plane, fly from Jacksonville to South Carolina that

to do our best to ensure that that faux pas didn't cause a

significant embarrassment.

That plane sucked.

I can tell you at that point in time, that news agency had no requirement to

keep it quiet.

We did beg, plead, asking them if they would be kind enough basically to keep

that to themselves.

There was a little bit of, you know, what are we going to get for it?

Can't say we bribed them, but I will say that we gave them an opportunity to...

be able to take a photograph possibly following the arrest in connection with

the investigation.

Their thing was, if you could just give us the exclusive.

It was something at least to sweeten the deal and thank them for covering up the

mistake that Special Agent Matthews, I mean, I didn't say that, may have made.

So I want to say, now that I'm saying and remembering all this, that was not

that faxed that freaking thing over.

It was somebody else.

I can promise you, every time I use a fax machine, I check it not once, not

twice, but at least three times.

If anybody ever knew how close this was just to blowing up, right? I know that

those subjects who may see this would go, damn it, how did that not happen?

Too bad, right? Didn't. We were the good guys. It always works better for the

good guys. We always find a way, which is what I'm saying happened there.

The night

before Attorney General Ashcroft, he gave the go -ahead to take the action.

Day of the takedown, it's a very early morning, probably anywhere from 5 o

'clock in the morning. You're getting up and making sure everybody's ready.

Regardless of whether you believe the person is violent or not, you still have

to be very careful as to your tactical approach any time that you engage in the

arrest of an individual because you're taking away their liberties, and they

pretty much know that.

The arrests were scheduled to all go down at the same time so that there

wouldn't be conversation.

And Jacksonville sent agents.

to each location so that somebody that's familiar with the case will be able to

be there to help with the arrest.

My role that day as the supervisor over the squad in the command post was really

kind of coordinating.

And if there was problems out in the field, any decision about how to handle

for the most part is going to come to me.

I was in charge of the arrest of Brenda Phoenix in Indiana.

I had the takedown of Dwight Baker.

My duty on takedown day was Gloria Brown here in Jacksonville.

So I sit in the FBI's office as we can hear them, like, hey, we're making the

move now.

It sounded like, you know, a mid -90s Michael Bay kind of thing. You're

you know, go, go, go.

So I got glum.

By far the nastier.

More potential danger of anybody else.

And then, you know, with me, it's always a contest with no matter what. So, you

know, I'm going to get my guy before anybody else.

My guy, Glum, was behind a fortress.

A legitimate, big time, cameras everywhere, big gate.

Chances are he's not going to open the gate. At the same time, I want to be

first.

So we had to find a way to get Glum to come out.

The thing we came up with was he has to come out and get his paper.

So that gate opens up. Who do you think walks out and gets the paper?

The wife, right? Not him.

So I'm going, oh, God, I'm going to ram this car through the front gate.

I had got ready, just getting ready to leave the house, and I see somebody

walking by the kitchen window, and I look out the door, and it's the FBI.

They haven't knocked on the door yet.

So I went and ran upstairs to tell my wife. I said, the FBI's out front.

So when they knocked on the door, it was Astrologa. We show him the arrest

warrant.

We gained access to the property, and he is taken into custody.

In the command post.

We kept hearing, so -and -so's been arrested, so -and -so confessed, can't

this person, so -and -so's arrested, they're denying everything.

And so Rick Dent went to Atlanta to get Uncle Jerry, Jerry

Jacobson.

The arrest of Jerry was an early morning at his house, you know.

Knock, knock, knock, FBI, open up.

I remember Jerry initially, you know, doing what you would expect a former

police officer to do was, you know, clam up. You know, he realized his goose was

cooked, so to speak.

Eventually, he received his jewelry, silver handcuffs.

That Jerry Jacobson arrest.

He had some Honda sports car thing that he was riding around in that we see, and

just cash in a trash bag in the trunk of his car. Who does that shit?

Who carries that crap around, really?

My first interaction with Jerry Jacobson was at the federal courthouse in

Atlanta.

I was in Atlanta because Jerry Jacobson was the head of the snake, and

I wanted to personally advise him of the charges against him.

Sources say that the FBI will announce that it has made arrests in an alleged

scheme to defraud the McDonald's Corporation by rigging its recent

game. Now, the FBI would only say that it has scheduled a news conference for 2

.15 this afternoon, but sources tell CNN seven of the eight people are in

custody. Sources say the eighth has been indicted, not arrested, yet still being

sought.

I'd laid out, I'm going to be the first, I was the last, the last one to get

their guy. So we needed to draw them out.

And then I came up with what I thought was a great idea.

A Broward County sheriff comes to the gate and says, do you guys mind coming

down here and identifying these guys?

They were robbing a house here, and they want you to identify them. I said, I

don't care.

They didn't bother me.

He said, well, let me take a couple minutes.

So I said, okay.

And then I went outside, and, of course, they grabbed me outside, and they says,

you're under arrest for mail fraud.

I said, mail fraud? What's that?

He says, on to McDonald's. I said, oh, okay.

Didn't have a clue that they were on to this case.

Nothing. And so he didn't say nothing else. I said, can I get you a cup of

coffee or something?

Matthews was one of the original people who arrested me.

We had some snippets of the phone calls just to let him know we had what we had.

And he decided not to cooperate, one of the very few.

I remember we were arguing in the car.

He said, yeah, you think you're some gangster or something. I said, yeah, and

you think you're Don Johnson, you know, from Miami Vice.

And at the end, he was okay in the front. He was a little bit of an

But you did offer him a cup of coffee. I did.

I'm that way.

I'm very friendly.

It wasn't just the takedown. There were a number of people on the initial

indictment that we charged.

On top of that, I needed to have agents going out to interview all these other

winners. What we didn't want to happen was...

Somebody who is a quote -unquote winner to be sitting at home and see this

takedown and then have two or three weeks to think about it.

Think about what they're going to say. Or worse yet, hop on a plane and, you

know, move to South America.

If you've played the popular McDonald's Monopoly game and thought you'd never

win the top prize, you may have been right. In Washington, the Attorney

and FBI announced eight people were arrested for defrauding McDonald's and

customers. My work said to me, the FBI is looking for you.

I'm like, what?

Oh, shit.

This is the FBI.

My friends were like from Louisiana, from the swamp. They go, we want to hide

you out in the bayou.

But then they're like, you can never contact anybody anymore.

It's like a TV script. You can't talk to anybody. You can't contact your friend.

I go, oh, hell no. I can't do that.

And finally they caught up with me. They finally found me at home. They were

very nice to me, and they were just straight to the point, and they got what

they wanted to hear from me.

I decided I was going to be the one to go down the street and interview Buddy

Fisher.

He was a little surprised, but really didn't try to tell us anything other

what really happened.

Nice guy.

So through the course of the interview I had with Dwight Baker, he implicated

George Chandler, his foster son, in the scheme, in the illegal activity.

At that point, we made a determination to reach out to George Chandler and talk

to him about his involvement.

I was on I -20 and my cell phone rang. My secretary came on the phone and said,

George.

there's two guys in the office here from the FBI who would like to speak to you.

Put them on the phone.

Who don't want to talk to the FBI, you know? So this guy

comes on the phone, and his name is Special Agent

Astrologa.

And he said, Mr. Chandler, We've arrested this morning Dwight and Linda

for their involvement in the McDonald's Monopoly games scam, and

we would like to speak to you about your involvement in it.

And the first thing out of my mouth was, if you've arrested Dwight and Linda

Baker, you've got the wrong people.

For some reason, I was home that day, and my sister called me.

So I picked up the phone and called her and just said, are you watching

television? She said no, and I said, well, turn it on.

William Fisher and Gloria Brown both live in Jacksonville.

Prosecutors say the plot was... And there was my name on the screen, Gloria

Brown, indicted.

I just kind of folded up in the kitchen by myself.

Again, there I was alone.

I'm like, okay.

Before I can get to even listen to what was on the television about me,

my doorbell rang.

Opened the door and there was this detective there.

Initially, she was denying being involved in anything. And I kind of

up to the fact of, we're not talking about whether you did it or not. We're

talking about how much time in prison you're going to serve. So, you know, you

might want to go ahead and start cooperating now.

And I had decided this time the lie was going to be over. And I just told them.

It was no need for me to lie anymore.

She basically told us what we needed to know. And we already knew, again,

because we knew the scheme and we knew the recruiting formula and how it

happened.

I saw her shoulders kind of sink a little bit.

I'm saying to myself, do I need a lawyer first?

You know, that's the kind of stuff. Am I doing the right thing? You know, I just

didn't know what to do. I never thought about what to do once I got caught.

And I was not sure if they was going to take me with them.

I was waiting on a police car to put up out front.

When they walked to the door, I walked to the door with them.

When they say that we'll be getting back with you, I was so happy right

in that moment. I said, at least that way I get a chance to make some

arrangements right quick.

The deal was if they didn't cooperate, we were going to arrest. If they did

cooperate, we were going to take their statement and then go ahead and document

it and then refer it to the case agent who would then take it to the federal

prosecutor.

I was almost done with my prison time for doing the fraud that I did.

And I see there's two tall gentlemen in suits.

They said, we're here for McDonald's Monopoly. And they had this poster laid

out. And Uncle Jerry was the middle bubble.

They had all these bubbles all around.

And then they had these five bubbles.

And I was that size bubble connected to him.

And it was Jerry Colombo deceased.

There's my picture, Robin Colombo incarcerated.

You know, and I'm looking over it, and I go, hmm, okay.

And I said, I'll tell you what.

Give me your card, and if I can think of anything, I will get in touch with you.

How about that?

And they said.

No, that's not how that works, Mrs.

Columbo. I said, that's how this is going to work right now.

I said, let me tell you something.

I have a little boy out there and a daughter, and you don't know who you're

messing with, and I'm not going to put their lives in jeopardy.

I got the card.

They go to leave, and I'm going to leave. I'm thinking, okay.

I'm going back down to the girls' part, right? Well, here come the officers from

the prison. They go, Columbo, come back up here.

And they went to the chef for me. I go, wait, wait, wait, what are you doing?

They said, well, your custody level has changed now because you're under

investigation. I said, no, I'm not.

I said, so whether I talk to them or not, whatever, this is all?

They said, yeah. I said,

hold it. They said, no, Ms. Columbo. I said, leave me alone.

I'm calling the feds.

I ran to the double doors, and that double door opened.

I said, hey, come here.

They said, oh, you want to talk? I said, yeah, come on in, come on. Take a mic

and have some coffee.

Can we have coffee?

I think they want coffee.

I said, you really know more than I do, honestly.

And, of course, they're like, well, why don't you humor us?

I said, well, let's do this. I need a cigarette.

So let's take a cigarette break. And I was thinking about it.

So I said, you really got to smooth it? I said, I really do.

You've got my nerves.

Rax, as a matter of fact, I'm in one now, talking about it.

And you really should quit those things. I said, yeah, today's not the day.

Six o 'clock came.

And they put me in where the TV room was. John Ashcroft came on television.

And my knees, I just kind of got weak and knew it was over.

This morning.

The agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested eight individuals

several states for their involvement in a nationwide scheme to defraud

McDonald's corporations and its customers by fraudulently manipulating

McDonald's promotional prize contests.

We want those involved in this type of corruption to know that breaking the law

is not a game.

That day, everything went, you know, really, literally according to plan.

I mean, for a very fun, interesting day, one I'll never forget.

I want to commend the fine work of the FBI and the Jacksonville Division of the

United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida.

Everyone involved in this investigation has worked hard to break this

conspiracy.

How do we miss this? There's like seven winners in the 864 area code in the last

four years. Like, how do we never put two and two together ourselves if they

kept coming from the same darn area?

And we had done stories, like big stories on two or three of the winners,

the million -dollar winners, too, and we had never put it together.

So that was one of the things that was a little bit kicking ourselves for

journalism, like, oh, yeah, we just never put that one together. So there

little bit of egg on our face on that one. Well, this story is going to make a

lot of people angry.

Prosecutors say it appears McDonald's customers never really had a chance to

the biggest prizes.

Frankly, the odds of your winning that million -dollar jackpot in McDonald's

weren't that good to begin with. The FBI said the odds were really about one and

zero. They needed their time. Many of the winners were from the same family or

were closely related.

At the center of the fraud ring, prosecutors say Jerome Jacobson assigned

place the winning big cash game pieces into circulation.

Instead, the FBI says he stole them, passing winning game pieces to his

who then recruited others to come forward and claim the big prizes.

Jacobson has been given a go -to -jail card for keeping the winning high -end

ticket. And, says the FBI today, they had a confidential informant who tipped

them off at first. Someone who had knowledge of the scheme.

McDonald's was devastated by the news, while a stunned spokesperson for Parker

Brothers had only this reaction.

We want you to have the opportunity to see who Mr. Jacobs is.

He's 58 years old. He's married and has a family.

He knows the seriousness of these charges.

And he also knows that he faces very serious potential

punishment in prison if convicted of these charges. We know many of you have

attempted to contact him, his wife, and his family.

and have been in his neighborhood, and we are asking you to allow there to be

some privacy for his family and for his neighbors.

Jerry Jacobson had retained counsel fairly quickly, an attorney

by the name of Ed Garland, and so my involvement was then.

talking to the attorney.

Once he has retained counsel, I've instructed him that I should analyze the

before he speaks further with the government.

Are you going to share your motto?

We follow the motto, a fish wouldn't get caught if he kept his mouth shut, and

that that's what a defendant needs to know.

Stop the music.

Stand behind us.

We do the fighting and the talking for you.

We're saying that you have a rogue employee that embezzles a piece, steals

bottom line. It was pretty clear that Mark was coming full force.

The first conversation was, please, straight up to the indictment and bring

every penny you have and your wife has. It was the threats of, I'm going to take

everything down to her engagement ring.

Mark is a very effective...

a very talented lawyer, and uses his power in a very assertive way

on behalf of his client, the United States.

Ed and I had many cases together, and he's a very experienced attorney. But I

told him that the chances for Mr.

Jacobson to go to trial and come out without a conviction was zero.

When you deal with a lawyer like that, you've got to let him know you're

unintimidated and unintimidatable.

So it became tense and confrontational immediately.

Mr. Jacobs will not be making any statements about this case until

he appears in court. Yeah, that was a very interesting day.

I sit down in front of the TV, I turn on CNN Headline News.

Boom. Picture my dad.

And I was like, wow.

In the back of my mind, I was like, I knew it.

My mom and I always knew there was something wrong, and here it is, right

in front of us now, right here on TV.

It's not a surprise.

He was good at manipulating people. He was good at it.

That's my dad.

I guess I was always questioning.

the legitimacy of everything.

It was always something new. It was always trips, and it was always doing,

know, always just spending things extravagantly, it seemed like to me.

My mom and I always joked that we always thought there was something not right

about him.

I knew he kept secrets from me.

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

And that's how I dealt with him.

If I didn't ask him any questions, He didn't have to lie to me.

For instance, he said that he had this swampland.

He might go out and buy me something, and I would say, Jerry, that's a lot of

money. He would go, I sold a piece of swampland.

Jerry was always trying to figure the easy way.

How do you get a free lunch?

The moral of the story is, There are no free lunches.

But there may be some brownies hidden somewhere.

Does that make any sense?

Mr. Jacobson was not helping us, and so the question was still ongoing.

How did he get the game pieces?

We know he did.

But how did he do it?

We didn't know if Dittler Brothers was involved.

I mean, there was no details to anything.

We don't know if it's just Jerry. We don't know if it's everybody in there.

I was furious that Jerry did what he did because he put all of those people at

risk.

And we took a trip and actually went to Dittler Brothers because there might

be... Somebody there inside.

When the FBI came in and shut everything down and started gathering their

evidence, and somebody came by and said, the FBI's here and got everything shut

down, you don't go anywhere near there.

Somebody's in trouble.

Somebody's in trouble, but what effect it's going to have, I don't know.

Well, Roger, first let me underscore the fact that Jerome Jacobson was not a

McDonald's employee.

He was, in fact, an employee of Simon Marketing, which was the firm that

McDonald's had contracted to administer its games.

McDonald's says tonight it has fired the Georgia company that ran the contest.

So now the FBI is investigating how many other instant winners weren't so

instant after all.

The deception.

by Simon Marketing was unacceptable.

We really trusted them to run the game for us. We had to end the relationship

gain the trust back with our customers.

Pretty much, I'd say McDonald's was 98 % of our business.

The FBI showed up one day at the front door and shut us down.

When the information came out, their stock went from approximately $100 to

basically 50 cents.

These layoffs are bad.

It was the largest one -day drop on the American stock exchange.

Ensuring that these games are secure, that is how they make a living.

Two days after McDonald's fired Sun and Marketing from all future promotions, a

second major company has also pulled the plug.

A couple days later, Kraft came out and canceled their contract.

There's nothing left.

So it affected Chicago, L .A., Atlanta office here in the States. We had an

office in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and several manufacturing facilities in

China.

The people at Simon Marketing were good people. They were professional.

We really loved working with them. So it was devastating.

when one bad apple wrecked the lives of so many people.

They're gone, man, they're gone.

We spent one night in jail for my bail. They asked for a million dollars.

The judge said, for this, you want a million dollars?

He said, 200 ,000.

I mean, the Lord really blessed me in a bad situation because I had three lots

that were free and clear.

The tax value was exactly $200 ,000 on those three lots.

So that was just a miracle.

These three lots here, the lake that's over on this side, but these three lots

here are the three lots that I put up as collateral for my property bond.

I understood it.

obviously, that something was amiss with Dwight's story.

And I immediately called Dwight.

And I remember being

incredulous with him, who is the guy that was going

through a divorce. Where'd you get this ticket?

What's going on?

He said, George, I can't talk about it right now. Don't worry.

You don't have anything to worry about. You didn't do anything wrong. It was me.

And I wasn't gravely concerned about it.

The thing that surprised me is they gave me bond.

They never should have gave me bond.

I'm telling you, I was a fugitive back in the 80s.

It was a mistake.

So I'm home about two days.

There's two guys at the gate with suits on.

I said, oh, they came back.

They came back for me.

That's the marshals coming to get me.

Here it's Jehovah Witnesses.

I was never so happy to talk to a Jehovah's Witness in my life.

I was in my maternity shop in Coral Gables. We have a TV going there all the

time. And they broke in the news that the McDonald's thing had just been

I was fucking floored.

Fucking floored.

Two seconds later, two FBI agents walked in my store.

Doug Matthews and Rick Dent.

and they said they'd like to talk to me about the McDonald's case, and I knew I

was fucked.

I knew I was fucked.

I'll be honest with you, I don't know if Jerry turned me in or not.

Right after it happened, I flew to Atlanta, Georgia.

I said, Jerry, how the fuck could you do this? I says, how the fuck? I thought

we were done, and I was really pissed because I had thought that night we were

done.

I had hired a local attorney to go with me to the meeting with the FBI, and

he called me and said, George, you've been indicted.

I was in shock.

You know, you don't know how to react because you're being charged with a

federal crime.

My name appears in the text of major newspapers and on major television

stations all across the nation. Friends are calling me.

Families are calling me.

Business acquaintances are calling me.

Customers are calling me.

Employees are calling me.

I didn't know what to tell them.

I didn't know what to tell my son.

who's eight years old at the time.

Every kid in the school has a question for Russell, and I don't know how to

him.

It was devastating.

George was very angry, upset, hurt.

But I tried to explain to him.

that I did everything in my power to protect him from this.

At

some

point in time, though, and it was in fairly short order, you snap out, I

out of it, and I took action. I went down to Jacksonville,

started making phone calls looking for what I termed the best criminal lawyer

town.

I'm Curtis Scott Fogator. I'm an attorney. I've been an attorney for

years. I was a federal prosecutor here in town for 17 years, and I've been out

in private practice for some 20 years, and I've been blessed to have been

selected one of the top.

criminal defense attorneys in Northeast Florida for the last couple of decades.

In 2001, I met George Chandler.

He was 29 years old.

Ninth grade education, but he's a brilliant young man.

I was very impressed with his candor.

He explained how he had been hoodwinked by his foster father, which, of course,

demonstrated innocence.

I thought, well, we can probably make this case go away pretty easily.

So I picked up the phone and called Mr. Devereaux.

Mr. Fogatter interviewed me in January of 1989 when I got hired in this office.

He's been to my house many times. I've been to his house many times.

At one point in time, we were very sociable.

Not so much anymore.

I explained to him how George Van Hoodwink did not know the tickets had

stolen or embezzled, and Mr. Devereaux's response was, well, if I had dropped

Mr. Chandler's case, I'd have to drop several others.

I was the first person to turn themselves in.

I mean, they had me.

I was scared as shit because just the name Mark Devereaux just reminded me of

old southern gentleman.

I mean, I'll never forget the first time I met him.

The only thing he said to me, don't ever lie to me.

He said, just don't ever lie to me.

I said, hey, man, I did whatever I did, and I'll tell you everything I did.

I ain't going to lie, because I've never believed in lying anyhow. I wasn't

going to start then.

The plan is to find a path to victory if it is there, to protect the client, to

help the client.

So if you start out, I'm just going to...

plead guilty, you never go through the mental discipline of, can I find a way?

We probably started out and said, if you want him as a witness, give him

immunity.

Something like that.

And that would have met head on with the 180 degree

opposite position.

Is a plea a possibility in this case?

A plea is always a possibility.

The issue of how he will address these charges is being evaluated.

When you talk about what Jerry was facing, it gets complicated.

If you start adding up all of the different counts that he was charged

was facing a lot of time.

And I know it was well over 10.

I remember it being, having a sense of just, huge sympathy for the

ordeal that was being imposed on them and the way it was being imposed.

Prosecutors say this is the man who started it all. Jerome Jacobson faces

counts of conspiracy in a plot they say involved $20 million worth of McDonald's

winning game prizes stolen and then sold to friends and relatives.

If he could cooperate, it would provide us just so much information to find all

these other winners.

And winners turned into recruiters.

and most importantly, to show exactly how he did it.

We could not quite figure it out.

And now, we knew he was doing it, we just didn't know the details on how he

doing it.

The government always wanted to know how he did it, and he did not cooperate

from the beginning.

He would have, but for the fact that his lawyers would not allow him to until we

worked everything out.

It was the, you know, talk peace but prepare for war.

We were preparing for a war.

I don't think there ever was an exit strategy to stopping. He'd been

it for 13 years. It's just gotten better and probably easier for him to do.

And I mean, the only reason he got caught was because he pissed somebody

somebody went to the FBI and said, hey, guess what's happening?

The informant key to unlocking scam behind the golden arches.

Of course, they never named who the informant was, but that's how it all

apart.

Do you have any idea who the informant might have been?

Nope.

I think it was the FBI.

Before this ever went down, there was a box.

Across the street from my house on a pole.

Placed there by Blue Ridge Electric.

I'd always questioned what it was.

I've developed a lot of property.

I'd never seen that box.

I was suspected they were eavesdropping onto me.

Not because of McDonald's, but because of a fellow developer here on the

lakes. The FBI came in.

The drug enforcement people came in. Everybody came in, tied up all of this

shit.

And I was on the peripheral of that.

Within a week after my arrest and after this went down, Blue Ridge Electric

Trucks came into the field across my street, and that box was gone.

So that's why, to me, I've always felt like their story of how an informant or

how somebody came forward, I felt like that was bullshit.

Do you know who the informant is?

I do.

Next question.

Without the informant,

Telling the FBI where to go, who to look at.

This case would have never been broken.

Never.

I will never tell you who the source was.

You will never get that from me. If I was a dead body, you could not get that

off my corpse.

That's how much I think about the Bureau.

It has to work like that, right?

If you had to make a guess, who do you think the informant would be?

Well, I don't think it was anybody in mind.

If it is, I'd be very surprised.

Real surprised. If you're going to surprise me, go ahead and surprise me.

I know who broke the case.

At this moment right now, I'm not sure if I feel comfortable saying who broke

the case. I need to talk to some people and make sure that... I'm not in danger

if I say who broke the case, because right now...

I

don't know if it's going to come back and bite me in the butt.

Who do you think it was?

Frank Limbaugh.

We had this big buildup of the case in anticipation of the trial.

We had them.

We want to make sure justice was served.

We're feverishly working on how could Jerome Jacobson steal winning pieces?

How did he do it?

Jerry Jacobson, tell the truth. What'd you do?

No one knew.

There's real permanent damage.

Without the informant, this case never would have happened.

The informant was who?

Time to tell the truth.

Nobody suspected that.