All language subtitles for McMillions - 01x01 - Episode 1.WEB-TBS.English.C.orig.Addic7ed.com

I want some!

It's the Monopoly game,
only at McDonald's

with over 50 million prizes
and supersized excitements.

Monopoly. Do not pass go.
Go directly to McDonald's.

If you were around back in the '90s...

Now at McDonald's, Monopoly is more
than a game. You can play it.

You heard it everywhere.

The game Monopoly is back at
McDonald's bigger and better than ever.

This year,
there's more prizes than ever.

McDonald's ran the Monopoly game
for years.

- Hey, collect the right game pieces.
- And win two million dollars.

But no one knew the truth about
the game being played.

No one.

People everywhere are winning big.

I've been caught stealing
once when I was five.

I enjoy stealing.

The McDonald's prizes could be
cars, boats,

hundred thousand
up to the million dollars.

When I want something
and I don't wanna pay for it.

But from 1989 to 2001...

Hey.
I won a Dodge Viper.

There were almost no legitimate
winners of the high value game pieces

in the McDonald's Monopoly game.

Yeah. I mean
how crazy bullshit is that?

It's mine.

MCMILLIONS

Jacksonville FBI
had a little bit of a reputation of

being a sleepy hollow
retirement office.

There was a slower attitude there.
Very undersized,

a fraction of a Miami or an Atlanta or
something like that spread very thin.

At the time in 2001,

I supervised a squad of approximately
12 agents charged with investigating

white-collar crime, bank fraud,
healthcare fraud, public corruption.

Even before I got there, I kept hearing
about this legendary guy Rick Dent

mid-career, senior agent
and his partner Doug Matthews,

a newly assigned agent
to the division.

I'm Special Agent Matthews.

When you pull Jacksonville as an office
you're going to, what I heard was,

"Good luck with that."

For big cases, man,

you're like duct taping stuff together
just because you wanna make it happen.

That's the type of division
you were in.

I was lucky to link up with Rick Dent
early on

and have him as the old guard,
my training agent.

He's a mathematician

and has about as much personality
as this piece of wood right here.

Very matter of fact. And so he and I
were kind of opposites there.

I'm always looking for another
fun ride, right?

If you guys get to Rick Dent,
I'm telling you,

he's gonna be
"Yes. No. Don't recall."

The filmmakers made multiple requests
to interview special agent Rick Dent.

His response: "No."

The priority for the FBI at that
particular juncture

was healthcare fraud.

A work in the one to three-year
type case, that's a long time.

Sometimes I have that ADD thing
of the shinier object or whatever.

So, I see this note in the corner part
of his desk and all I saw was

McDonald's Monopoly Fraud
with a question mark.

And I go, "What is that?"

Because I'm bored to death with
this healthcare garbage, right?

It's important
but I was ready to move on.

I go, "Is this the McDonald's
Monopoly game?" He was like, "Yeah."

Eventually,
I was gonna get around to it.

So what he told me was that there was
an individual who had called in

and had this story that
the Monopoly game was fixed.

That was pretty much it.

I go, "Give me that damn thing.
I'm gonna go check this out."

I'm seeing the fun mirror with that.

That's got to be more fun than
this shit that I'm looking at.

Dent thought it was just some BS story.
So,

"Yeah, here. Run with this
for a little bit, young man."

I contacted the source of this call

and the source gave me three names

that were
previous million-dollar winners

and I said I know this is fixed
because these people are related.

They're on the family tree somehow
with all different names.

And the person who's controlling this

was this nebulous name of Uncle Jerry.

So I come back,
I'm excited, right?

I got the biggest case ever. I said,
"Look, all million-dollar winners.

We need to be on this.
I think I probably said that.

"Screw that healthcare shit we're
working." Or something like that.

Rick, I don't know if that was it or...
I know you would never agree with that.

But like any senior agent goes,
this happens even in today's bureau.

The new young guy goes out and finds
a nice piece of gold.

The old agent goes,

"Give me that back and let me look at
this." And that's about how it was.

Truth be told,
I was a little skeptical.

Fast food, promotional game fraud

was not making any list of priorities
anywhere.

I don't think anybody had really been
seeing anything like this before.

So there's always a risk that
I turn these guys loose on this

and it turns out it's not true
and that I've expended resources.

But I think we all realized
if this is true, this is big.

What Rick did was immediately get
in touch with the US attorney's office

and Mark Devereaux because

if you don't have an interest from
a prosecutor, you're wasting your time.

Devereaux was the go-to guy that
prosecuted our white-collar stuff.

If there's a chance this thing
can be indicted, prosecuted,

even if it's a difficult case,
he's gonna be the guy to do it

because he's the guy behind the wheel.

That part of the sell to get that
prosecutor on was a big a deal.

I didn't know if Devereaux knew what
Monopoly game was. I have no idea.

I think he was a Burger King guy.
I don't know.

My name's Mark Devereaux,

Assistant US Attorney
for almost 30 years.

In this case,
it was, I don't know if this is real

or if it's just somebody trying to get
family members somehow

interviewed and get them in trouble.

But lo and behold,

when we received
a list of all the winners,

we could show to different databases
these individuals were related.

They had family connections
in the local Jacksonville area.

In my world, you don't believe in
coincidences very much.

And the chance of having numerous
family members and relatives

win the game
was just astronomical.

Basically, you've got less of a chance

than you do of getting
struck by lightning in Florida.

At that point in time,
we knew there was a problem.

How big was that problem?
We had no idea.

The information we were compiling is
that their contest had been infected

years before we became aware.

We're talking altogether hundreds of
millions of dollars of these prizes.

Well, how much of that is fraud?

Once Devereaux said, "I'm interested
in this," he's on for everything.

All the strategy sessions.

Some prosecutors, you see that space.

Devereaux, he got no space.
Right all up in there with you.

We start with where could there be the
opportunity to steal the game piece.

We weren't sure if there was somebody
inside with McDonald's

where that person was,
how many and how far that went.

How many suspects do we have? We
have to figure out who makes the cups,

who makes the fry box, who makes these
game pieces that you would pull off,

how many people are in this chain.

There's all kinds of possibilities.
This could be the driver,

the delivery people,
people in the factory,

or even somebody
even corporate at McDonald's.

We didn't close out anyone.

So there reached a point where
there was a ton of questions

but it was very difficult
to pursue that further

without putting some action to it.

There wasn't a lot of, at the time, get
on the internet and do something.

We clearly had to start somewhere

but without compromising the case.

So we needed a source of information
on the inside.

There was a big decision to be made
and that was

do we contact McDonald's
because we just ran into a dead end.

I was sitting back going,
"Don't let them know.

I don't want them involved yet.
Way too soon."

But that's me and that was
just one little tiny voice.

And I mean tiny when I say that.

Of course there's a possibility that
somebody in McDonald's is involved

or knows about this
and is looking the other way.

But that was a risk we were
ultimately willing to take.

We didn't want to alert too many people
at McDonald's.

So, we contacted their Head of Global
Security, Rob Holm,

and told him that

t would probably be best for you
to come to Jacksonville.

Didn't tell him why. Just told him,
you have to come and see us.

That this was need-to-know only.

Do not tell anybody you're coming
to see the FBI, to keep it quiet.

McDonald's sent three people

and I personally picked them up
here in Jacksonville

and we drove over to the FBI Office
in the morning.

Mostly, it was just welcome to
Jacksonville, this and that.

Didn't even explain to them
what we had.

We got to the FBI office...

Took them up to the conference room.

You're evaluating their body language
or whether they're twitching.

Are they legitimate? Or is there
something else going on here?

At that point, we did not know
if the McDonald's was involved.

Every organization
can have a bad apple.

This part of the investigation was
extremely boring to me.

I don't want anything to do with this.
Call me when it's over, Rick, right?

Which was sort of my MO a lot of times.
It's way too slow for me.

But I was,
"No, you got to be here for that."

And so I think I showed up.
I might've had a gold suit on.

I had it in the closet and I thought
this is a great opportunity

where this was like a golden fry suit,
right?

Man, when I wore that in there,
Mark Devereaux,

if he could've ripped it off
with his hands, he would've.

He goes, "Are you kidding me?"

But it had a white shirt on, right?
So I thought I was safe. I wasn't.

Doug has quite a wardrobe
and there he is, sitting there.

And lo and behold, he looks like
he's a manager of a McDonald's.

They thought it was cool.

I'm kidding.

So, when you're there
in that meeting, very tint.

I went up to a whiteboard and started
putting names down.

And I ask,
"Do you recognize the names?"

"No, sir."

"All these people are winners
on your promotional games."

And then, I started drawing lines of
family connections and relationships.

Devereaux's putting around the
whiteboard there, "Did you know this?"

Brothers, sisters, cousins,
mother-daughter, that type thing.

This person is married to
this person's daughter

and the last names were all different.

And I remember it was literally
jaws on the table.

They just could not believe it.

Even though we had it look like our
corporate victim here of McDonald's,

are they truly a victim?
I mean, there's always that.

And so there was more information there
that I would've probably put out there,

certainly enough for them to see, wow,
that, "Yeah, have an issue."

Everybody agreed that we needed
to keep this circle of individuals

that had this knowledge
to the absolute minimum.

Devereaux was doing most the talking
as he usually does

and it just seemed like
this meeting just took forever.

Don't know if I was hungry, I might've
been hungry twice in that meeting.

Proving this case historically,

which is what we traditionally did
in white-collar cases

when you rely on paperwork, you rely on
witness interviews, bank statements,

was gonna be very difficult.

I mean, almost monumental.

We would, in this case,
have to think outside the box

and then we find out that they were
on the cusp of running another game.

It was a perfect fit because we were
looking to doing something proactively,

essentially catch people in the act.

We told them the only way to identify
this criminal enterprise

was to have them run a game

knowing that there's fraud somewhere
involved in this.

We have this, we're going forward,
we want your help.

If the answer is no
nothing happens.

My name is Rob Holm, Director of
Global Security for McDonald's.

Our brand is, throughout the world,
37,000 restaurants and 120 countries.

So, it's a big responsibility.

When I first learned about our Monopoly
game being compromised I was shocked.

l was really shocked. How in the world
could have this have happened?

More importantly, was anybody from
McDonald's a part of this?

The FBI wanted to run the promotion
knowing that it was rigged.

I was hesitant to do that.

Obviously we're concerned
that if this game is rigged,

customers are not even gonna get
a chance to win the million dollars.

I think we were naive to think that
they would agree right then and there

and we'd be off and running.

These promotions were, of everything
McDonald's, one of the bright spots.

I remember the mad cow
and at that time,

McDonald's was struggling
with some image things.

Concern over Britain's so called
mad cow disease spread late today

to McDonald's restaurants.

First mad cow and now this.

McDonald's and you.

McDonald's and you
Sharing good times...

The most important thing for McDonald's
is their brand name.

They're a family restaurant
that can be trusted.

Their golden arches
are a part of America.

Remember there's only one McDonald's
and there's only one you.

They have to protect that.

McDonald's and you.

And so if it's on a 6:00 news,
in the national news,

that McDonald's games are a fraud,

they could suffer irreparable damage
to their good name.

I wasn't in their meetings
but I would bet dollars to donuts

that there were a few people that said,
"We can't do this, shut it off,"

and nobody ever finds out about this.

They wanted this big meeting.

So we went out there to Illinois,
their headquarters...

They got this great coffee in the
inside when you walk in their place

and you're waiting on them,
so anyway, I know that's aside.

At that time, we weren't sure which way
they were gonna go.

That was a heck of a decision.

There were so many what ifs.

What if it's somebody
within our own company? A traitor?

We've got a problem.

They needed to find that out,
because if they had just shut down,

it may have continued.

How many people have been playing
this thing?

They're gonna find out,
we didn't help burn this down.

The McDonald's knew they had
a ticking bomb.

Making that call was something that
we took seriously.

Our worry all along was that
this could be leaked out publically.

So, it was not an easy decision

but ultimately, we owed it to our
customers to do the right thing

which is to run the game one more time.

We absolutely knew that
if we didn't get this right

we're not getting another opportunity,
it's not like,

"Don't worry,
we'll run this again next month."

We knew that at best we had this
one shot to move our investigation.

This is how we do it.

From that point, it was literally

"McDonald's,
tell us how this program works."

But McDonald's make French fries
and hamburgers, and milkshakes,

and apple pies.

They don't make marketing.

They outsourced it. They They hired
a marketing company, Simon Marketing.

Simon Marketing produced and came up
with the Happy Meal toys in the '80s.

Your kids will love McDonald's Happy
Meal. It's food and fun in a box.

The Happy Meal is gonna increase your
business but it's for the children.

I have a Happy Meal.

They wanted a promotion for the adult.

I'm Richard White,
started at Simon Marketing in 1981.

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

The Monopoly game, we designed that
game and it was running once a year.

A two-million-dollar grand prize.
Play Monopoly.

It was ridiculous amount of increase
in McDonald's business,

like, 40% when we ran the game.
People love collecting.

The Monopoly promotion is much like the
Monopoly game you would have at home.

Customers try to match game pieces like
boardwalk and park place.

They had their cards and it'd be full,
but that'd be missing a piece,

and a piece and a piece, and a piece,
because those were the winning pieces.

And there was low-value pieces that you
could win, food items, beverages,

and some of the high value pieces, the
homes vehicles and the million dollars.

- Boardwalk.
- Boardwalk?

So they were after that million-dollar
winner and people like chance games.

Any game we did for McDonald's
always increased their business.

We actually did scrabble one year.

Got to where
they started doing it twice a year.

How are we gonna get our sales
back up? Let's run Monopoly again.

This is how we do it,
all hands up in the air.

There were very specific rules for
how you could obtain the game piece.

One of the ways was that
you could just walk in

and ask for free to get a game piece
because otherwise, it was gambling.

How else can you get the game piece?
You could go in and buy a food product

and you could get the game piece
out of some of the magazines.

Nowhere in the game rules does it say,
I can get a game piece

from Uncle Jerry.

This is how we do it.

With a significant case,
an undercover operation

or something that involves a lot of
people, you could give it a name.

So we had a contest to come up
with a name among the squad.

Some of the names are
Operation Unhappy Meal, Fallen Arches.

I think there were a few playing on the
Hamburglar or Stale Fries.

I don't think we sent that one
up to headquarters for approval.

I think calmer,
more rational minds prevailed.

The new promotional game was called,
"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

to match up with the TV show.

Play the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
game at McDonald's.

If you remember, the TV show, they ask,
"Is that your final answer?"

- Final answer?
- Final answer.

So, that ultimately became the name of
this operation.

Game time. Kickoff has started
and we're in the game.

At the time, I was always looking for
an undercover angle,

even though I was being told,
"You don't want that."

I was always asked, "What about
this one? Go get the bad guy."

I wanna burn down
the criminal enterprise.

Maybe it's the accountant in him
or this Walter Mitty complex,

but this was the opportunity to be an
undercover agent,

even before we could articulate
the need to do any kind of undercover,

that there was always this,

somehow, some way, we got to do
an undercover in this thing.

Every single meeting,
I'm the one over there going,

"Undercover investigation."
I didn't think anybody was listening.

As a matter of fact, I think a couple
of them started out with,

"Matthews, I don't wanna hear anything
about an undercover investigation,

just sit over there and listen."

Rick always coined that I was
the George Costanza

like Seinfeld was being back then.

All right, that's it for me.
Take care, everybody.

I'd come in and I'd say
"Undercover," and I'm going, I was out.

You could let him run with things a bit
and then bring him back to reality.

Okay. "Yeah, that's great, Doug.
By the way,

I still need that FD-302
you promised me, so I want you

to go get that done and then we'll talk
about undercover work."

So we get the call from McDonald's
that this guy, Michael Hoover,

a winner had claimed the latest prize.

So, we had the advantage of knowing
this person's name

and we're able to do a little bit of
preliminary background.

I think he worked as a pit boss
at a casino.

I guess he would've been familiar with
gambling and sweepstakes and whatnot.

Rick wanted to try to do the wiretap.

It's called a Title III investigation,
the wire investigation got up.

And you're sitting
and you're not doing anything

and that's a boring situation for me.

I don't know how many poems I can write
on a piece of paper to get through it.

So, I said,
"Look, what do you think about this?"

When you win, you party, you're signing
up as winners to, and say,

"Hey, I'm okay with using my face
and the big check or whatever it is

for future promotions."

So I saw that as an opportunity.
Let's use that as a platform for us.

I said, this is a great opportunity
for an undercover investigation

where we do this TV commercial
of the winners,

like publishers clearing the house.

Jumping up and telling us how they won
these and what they did with it,

so we could do that with Hoover.

We're the production company,
that's how this could roll.

And he's like, "Matthews, who's gonna
do this? Are you gonna do it?

Because I'm not doing it."
And I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna do it."

He goes,
"You don't know anything about that."

And I said, "I'm gonna be the director
because they don't do shit.

And then I'm gonna get McDonald's
to give me their public relations."

That's all I said.

And Rick goes, "Wait a minute.

If we're going to do anything,
we're gonna need SAC authority."

I'm Tom Kneir.
I was the Special Agent in Charge

of the Jacksonville office of the FBI.

In each office,
you have the SAC for the office.

That's their Special Agent In Charge.
And then you have squads.

Most of the contact is usually
with the squad supervisor.

But this was a particular case that
I had a lot of hands-on with Chris

and everybody that worked on that case.

Doug was almost brand new at the time
and he's been given a badge, a gun,

and some credentials, and now
he's got a superman's cape, right?

And away he goes.

So the next day,
I think I was called

and he said,
"Hey, you, need to come up here."

When you hear your name,
"Matthews to the SAC's Office,"

never good. Never, ever good.

And everybody knows it's like the walk
of shame. To the elevators, whatever.

"Oh, shit, Matthews.
I hope you still have a paycheck,"

because they all know it's bad.

And so I come in and it's SAC Kneir,
CDC, the Chief Division Council,

Rick Dent, Graham, in this room
about this size. It's small.

And they all turned at me and I go,
"I'm sorry."

That's all I said, and Rick goes,

"You know, I think this might work.
And he is gonna do it."

And that right then was probably,
if I was ever concerned about,

"I don't know, man.
This might get somewhere,"

be-careful-what-you-ask-for thing,

maybe that was the moment for me
but it quickly passed. I was back in.

We didn't have a lot of undercover
agents in Jacksonville.

You could call headquarters and say,
"We need a undercover agent down here."

"Well, he's not available for three
weeks," and, you know.

And so we'd just kind of rolled the
dice and said, "You know what...

"Doug is a little bit of an actor
anyway,"

so I guess that's when my hair
turned white. No.

Being an undercover agent,

it's not just something you raise
your hand and decide to do.

There's a stringent process of school,
testing, all these things that

didn't exactly match with
Doug's concept of being undercover.

He anted to get right up there onstage.

He was not a certified undercover.
But for a specific case

you can get what they call
SAC authority to do undercover work.

And that's what Doug Matthews did,
just for that specific case.

My name is Janet Pellicciotti

and I was a special agent for the FBI
in the Jacksonville Division.

I was our undercover coordinator also
and I tried to get him

to become an undercover agent
because he was a natural.

Undercover was like acting,
only it's real.

You sit there and there's a real threat
and somebody could harm you.

They could really harm you.

The Jacksonville Division,
if you talk to Agent Pellicciotti,

is a small division
that didn't do a lot of this.

This is basically
your one shot to go undercover?

Right. I got to do all the fun and not
have to go through all the bullshit.

Yeah, just make it happen.

Hey, Matthews, just make it happen.
I'm thinking to myself,

one, "Oh, my God, Really?"
And then two is, "Sweet."

He wanted to be thrown into the lion's
den and he wouldn't have gotten it

if the SAC
did not feel he could handle himself.

So, they got some undercovers
to act as a film crew.

My name is Jan Garvin
and I was videographer.

When I answered his call,
he said, "You're gonna love this."

Not "Hey, Jan, how's it going?
Let's go how was the trip?"

"You're gonna love this."

And after he explained what it was,
it was like, "Okay, we can do this,"

and "Yeah, I'm gonna love it."

We needed to put together what appears
to be a legitimate production company,

a video person, an audio person,
a director and an interviewer.

I go, "Yeah, I need one just to act
like they're the lighting person."

Nobody needs to see that you're bureau,
right?

So give me somebody that's not stupid,
because we don't know jack, right?

In my mind, I just thought, just get on
the stage and everything will be fine.

You'll just roll right through.

With any production company
and any good undercover operation

you need a good name. In this case we
came up with "Shamrock Productions."

Which is good but I always liked
the byline, "'Cause you're just lucky."

That was good.

We thought about having everybody
in this undercover operation

be FBI personnel.

They legitimately tried to make
that happen.

It just that the way that this scenario
had to run,

you needed somebody
inside McDonald's

with that background
that would be hard to fake.

My name is Amy Murray.

I've been with McDonald's for 22 years.

The FBI investigation happened
17 years ago,

and it's been years
since I've talked to anyone.

So in fact, I don't really tell
the story that much because

how do you drop into conversation that
you're part of an FBI investigation?

Back in 2001, I was
in the Communications Department.

I had only been working on Monopoly
and games for about six months.

My boss's boss called me
into his office and he was like,

"Amy, the FBI has contacted us.

They've told us that the game pieces
are being stolen

and that the entire game
may be compromised by a criminal ring."

And if you can imagine,
I was completely shocked.

I felt sick to my stomach.

To break that trust
was just devastating.

How could this possibly happen?

I started thinking back to all the
answers I heard from Monopoly winners,

and it did seem like
they were almost scripted.

Hindsight's 20/20

and I started to realize that
it did seem like there was a pattern.

You know, I used that word "pattern"
and I think that

was when the FBI really said, "It would
be great to talk to Amy directly

since she has so much contact
with the winners."

For a civilian to participate
in an undercover operation

doesn't happen much at all,
for obvious reasons, right?

Because if something happens,
you want people who are professionals,

that are used to being in situations
like that.

I was concerned because I wanted to
make sure her safety and security

was first and foremost. They said,
"Rob, don't worry. She will be safe."

We really didn't know how far we'd have
to go to help the FBI get evidence.

And, yes there were nerves involved
and I was nervous.

But I was all-in. I wanted to make it
right as fast as possible.

So, I would be talking to the FBI
sometimes every day,

sometimes twice a day.

People were intrigued
what's this special project.

I just couldn't talk about this, not to
my family, not to my closest friends,

not even to co-workers.

We told a couple people in McDonald's
and then our team, that's it.

Because we still didn't know,
you got to remember this investigation,

we didn't know if anybody was
infected through corporate, or who.

So we set up a time
for Shamrock Productions

to go up and visit Mr. Hoover.

He had already been in contact with Amy

and he was very amenable to us
coming by to film this commercial

that we were putting together.

I'll never forget showing up at
an airport, then a white van pulled up

with all of the FBI agents and

they're like "Hi, Amy,"
and I was introduced to all of them.

I really had to talk to Doug about
this is what a producer would do.

This is what the cameraman would do.
And I was just playing myself.

The first time we're going out there,
I think I had like a golf shirt on.

I looked like maybe I played nine holes
or something like that.

Amy told me a director looks like
somebody who came off the golf course.

So, I'm excited, right? But I have
a lot of apprehension as well.

It's the first one, you want it to be

seamless
and you don't know what to expect.

As an agent you wanna carry a gun
and wear a bulletproof vest.

But in an undercover operation,
that may be too much risk.

You wear an ankle holster and then

you sit down at a chair
and somebody sees it, so.

You had that little extra antenna
going up

to make sure you don't say anything
or do anything

that would trigger the suspect to look
at you crossways and go, "Hmm."

I had butterflies in my stomach.

I was nervous about not wrecking
the investigation.

I wanted to make sure I did a good job,
that I wasn't causing any suspicion.

It's an adrenaline
that happens through your system.

You feel fully awake and alive.

She was very nervous and I'm like,

"You talk to these people all the time,
right?" "Yeah, but not like this."

And I go, "There's not like this.

You don't know anything
about our investigation.

They don't, either,
so forget about that."

She's laughing, like, how am I
supposed to forget about that, right?

I said, "You got to forget about that
and just do what you normally do."

We're very close to the exit.
We know where it is.

Just stay as close as you can
because I don't know what to expect.

Any civilian that you bring in,
you're gonna tell them,

"We have a team.
There's always a team outside.

If anything happens,
they'll be there immediately

to make sure you're safe and secure."

We have distress calls,
things like that.

So, if the undercover agent
says a certain word,

"I feel like
a terrible flu is coming on,"

something's really gone wrong,
we got a problem.

And so they went to his home,

they came in...

And so you have the FBI agents,
unbeknownst to Mr. Hoover,

with the cameras on their shoulder.

If we were set up to record anything,
we would hit the record button.

You never know
what you're gonna capture.

Always gold when they don't know it.

The greatest thing in the world about
all of this is we had a camera rolling.

- Would you take that to your bank?
- What was that?

You think you could take that
to your local bank to cash?

I doubt it. I doubt it.

And suddenly one of you says,
"We'll do this at the end".

Amy,
she worked her McDonald's magic

and she had all this confetti popper
stuff and the big check.

We never know, whenever we get a call
from Amy where we're gonna...

It's always good to find out where she
always takes us to a different area.

A good surprise.

Yeah, that's definitely childproof.

I mean, it's a big check.

I think it was taller than her,
actually.

Everything had to seem very natural.

It had to seem like we had done this
a million times.

We made sure that I always called
Doug Doug and not Agent Matthews

because it would have been really bad
if suddenly I was like,

"Agent Matthews, can you go do this?"

Amy was really nervous, the whole time.

Which is good.
It was healthy to be that way

because I told her I was, too,
and I wasn't lying to her.

She's used to this, I'm not, even
though I say, "Oh, I got this," right?

She had no idea that I had never done
this before but I loved it.

- There's his Monopoly.
- All right.

It's got to be sinking in now.

Now it's official, Ronald McDonald,
the official signature.

Doug Matthews could talk to a wall
and get it to respond.

He's got that little bit of a southern
drawl and everybody sort of likes him.

He's like, "Gosh, darn, you won."

There was no risk that
somebody's gonna think,

"Well, this guy is an FBI agent
and this is an undercover operation."

No FBI agent laughs
as much as this guy does.

I go, "Wow, this really looks like
it's had a woman's touch here.

It was all this plaid, just this shit,

which is probably why I did it.

And I said all kinds of stuff, again...
We need to move this out,

make everybody seem real comfortable
with uncomfortable things

which is what I'm good at.

Tell us the story about how you won at
the Monopoly Game,

in your own words.

Okay.

They started out pretty peaceful,
it was a day off

and I went to the beach for a while.

I ended up actually falling asleep
at the beach.

And when I woke up, the wind had come
up and was covered with sand,

not a lot, but a little bit of sand.
I picked up my belongings

and I headed down to the water there
to wash my legs off with the sand

and I was a little klutzy.

The People Magazine and my towel fell
out of the backpack into the water,

and got all wet. I ended up throwing
those away on the way to the car.

After I was coming home I decided to
stop and get provisions for dinner.

So I stopped at the McQuade's
Supermarket and picked up a few things

and I had never got a chance to read
the magazine.

And it was right there at the checkout
stand, so I bought one.

When I got home I was leafing through it.
We had the McDonald's Monopoly Game

and it had instant prize winners on it,
or they had the quick pick,

I don't know what they're called.

And the first one I peeled off
I believe was Pennsylvania Avenue,

the second one I peeled off was
a million-dollar instant prize winner.

It was like, "Wow is this for real?"
And then I followed the directions

and made the calls and talked
to the people and it was for real.

Amy is just used to getting the story,
but for me I'm putting legs to that.

And he was mentioning
some grocery store and so I go,

"Which one?

Is it right here? Hey, can you take us
there?" He goes, "Sure."

He's feeding off the energy part.

No, wasn't about to stop that,
that was great.

It's a field trip, right?

I'm getting calls.
"What the fuck are you doing?

I mean, why-what, this is like,
are you adlibbing?"

And I'd go, "Hey, Jan,"
my camera guy, right?

"Can you get this?"
"Yeah, I can get it."

Doug struck me as one of the new breed
of agents who thinks outside the box

if you will,
but he was gung-ho from the get-go.

This is where I got the People Magazine
and inside we had the Monopoly Game

with the instant one-million-dollar
winner, and it was great,

it's fantastic.

- Great.
- Got it, okay.

He's telling us how he won the prize,
all the BS...

His was a magazine-type thing
which at the time I didn't even know.

I go, "Really? I thought you got this
off the packages."

And Amy's like, "Did you read any of
that shit I sent you," right?

And I go, "Of course I did.
Which, I may have glossed over."

So I go, "Hey, what'd you do
with the money?" Why?

Because I wanna go seize that stuff,
right?

And he's like, "I'm buying a boat."
And so I go,

"What name would you have
on the back of your boat?"

And he was like, "Ruthless Scoundrel."

- One, two, three.
- Thanks, McDonald's. Hey.

So I'm reenacting that. And I go,
"So, Michael, you were on the beach?"

"Yes, and it's right here,
it's this beach," and I go,

"Really? Take us to it."

And I didn't care what that meant
to my camera guy, right? He's like,

"Are you kidding me?
I got to the damn beach?"

There's always somebody that could
respond tactically if needed.

But if something went south between
the time something went south

and the time they got there...

Don't do anything stupid.

Doug was a professional
but he also did like to have fun.

He loved to tease me
and kept me on my toes.

This is what makes my fun meter go.

Amy's back there going, "Look at these
shoes I have,"

and I'm not looking at shit like that,
I said,

"Take your high heels, why are you
wearing high heels anyway?"

She was getting on to me about,

"Hey, can you plan this better,"
but I didn't know.

Can you get enough sound if he tells
the story one more time?

- Do you need it? We can try it.
- Okay.

Anybody noticing you yet?

- Not really.
- Good.

Yeah. You keep people from grabbing
this check about right now.

When Doug's at the house
it was a controlled environment.

When you're out in the real world,
there's nothing controlled.

You're always wary, the operation and
the case could be uncompromised.

This is where I lost
my People Magazine.

I'm glad that after the beach I stopped
and picked up another one

because when I did,
I found the McDonald's Monopoly Game,

one-million-dollar
instant prize winner.

All right, great. Okay. Good.

Obviously
this was Doug's very first undercover

and so you'd wanna try to

keep him under control,
keep him sedated, so to speak.

They don't make it easy.

So, I'm like, "Man I got plenty,
I got enough."

Can I do a couple of artsy things,
okay, real quick?

Hey.

He'd stand there smiling
and you're doing all this artsy stuff,

and then some kid ran up and grabbed
the check to, to run away with it.

I'm gonna let this evidence just walk?
No way.

And I'm tracking down the beach.

And it's like, "Dude, it's not real."

That was bad news.

That's not a good problem to have
being an undercover agent.

And this guy is hammered,

fortunately he's running like
in a zigzag so it's easy to catch.

This kid, he was like full of sand
in his mouth and crap and I'm like,

"Dude, you see these, I don't know
what I'm gonna do with all this sand."

And he's like,
"Man, I just saw all those zeroes

and thought I'm just gonna go take it."

And I can't even remember where he
wounded off but we never saw him again.

Sometimes on a case
being lucky is better than being good.

No Asics, no nothing,

and we still caught that dude because
he was hammered and we were not.

And we did get the check back.

It worked great,
Amy was phenomenal

and I'm like,
"Man, undercover is awesome."

Turned out it tickled our wire up.
Michael Hoover would be on the phones

which is great because then we were
listening to that, recording it.

Again, it got him comfortable,
it actually worked, all that works.

At that time I was here in Jacksonville
in the, what we call, wire room.

We were listening in for
what we hoped to be a telephone call

to this Uncle Jerry.

And immediately

there's a phone call by Mr. Hoover to
Mr. Glomb down in South Florida.

We were up on three or four phones.
One was this guy, Andrew Glomb.

Andrew Glomb was the guy
with a checkered past.

He had previously convicted for
some drug charges on the federal side

with the DEA.

He had been in a drug trafficking
thing. He was a fugitive for a while,

eventually got arrested
and he did some time.

And so, Mr. Hoover had called
Mr. Glomb.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
"Hello, yeah, Andy." That's Andy Glomb.

"Andy, they were here,
they believed everything

I told them about winning the ticket
on that People Magazine."

"And I was telling them I did this,
and I did that."

And at the very same time
I'm on my cell phone

talking to Doug Matthews
and telling him, "Listen to this."

The feeling from him on the phone call
was "Man, I got them snowed,"

it was that, l mean, it was perfect,
exactly what you're after.

He's talking,
"Man, you're not gonna believe it.

This director asked me
about the name of my boat.

I said 'Ruthless Scoundrel."'

And they're just laughing on the phone
how funny that was to them

because they knew they had lied and
had stolen this money from McDonald's.

In that call effectively what he's
doing is confirming

beyond any doubt
that he didn't win it.

It just doesn't get any better
than that. It's like high fives.

That was why you get up
on these wiretaps.

So we're hearing how they did it.

At the time,
we didn't know how big this was.

We knew of some,
but we didn't know it all.

It was amazing to me
how little we did know.

The spider web of all,

we had this Uncle Jerry,
everything was very general, nebulous.

We still didn't know,
you got to remember,

who this Jerry person was,
if there even was a Jerry.

So, all of the newer agents, we were on
the wiretaps to find out more

about the depths of this scheme.

Back then I was a new agent

and my first assignment when I was
brought in was to work the wire.

My Title III has to be monitored
full time, 24/7.

You hear the call, grab your headset,
you put it on, you listen to the call.

We're listening in the wire room

and I'm hearing the name Uncle Jerry
thrown around on the phone.

"Uncle Jerry, Uncle Jerry. You don't
wanna make Uncle Jerry upset."

I do remember clearly feeling like
I was in New York

and I was listening to a mobster
talking about running his mafia empire,

some mafia don, because that's kind of
how this guy came off.

So we had to find Uncle Jerry.
I mean, how do you do that?

We did an analysis of phone records
from past winners.

You look for that common number.

We knew when they won the prizes,
what year,

and we could cord it off to a month
so we backed up to and went forward to.

We culled the phone numbers coming in
and going out for this period of time.

Lo and behold, each of their phone
numbers were calling common numbers.

We saw the activity heavy coming in

right before
the prize was awarded or claimed,

and then heavy right after it,
and then nothing.

And then none of them were related,
they didn't know each other.

All were hitting that number.

All these phone calls
include one person.

Jerome Jacobson,
also known as

Jerry Jacobson, the absolute
head of security for Simon Marketing.