All language subtitles for FBI True Season - 5 episode 7

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

- In 2001,
you guys get a big tip.

- They said that
the McDonald's Monopoly

promotion games
are compromised.

- Win a McDLT,
Coca-Cola, or $1 million.

- The source said
it was all fixed.

And this guy, Uncle Jerry,
is the person behind it.

The guy who handles
all the high-end pieces,

his name is Jerry Jacobson.

Is this Uncle Jerry?

There had to be over 100,
maybe 150 people

that had been
in this huge conspiracy.

- We got another winner in May
for $500,000 instant winner,

a woman named Brenda Phenis.

And she is Dwight Baker's
sister-in-law.

He's a recruiter.

Everybody has to kick money up,
so Brenda's not getting

$500,000 for herself to keep.

She's gonna get $90,000,

Dwight Baker
is gonna get $90,000,

and Uncle Jerry--
Jerry Jacobson--

was gonna get $70,000.

- They're not real happy
with her.

- We could have a problem.
These guys are really mad.

- Dwight's gonna kill Brenda.

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

# #

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent-to-agent.

# #

This is "FBI True."

- Dwight Baker, key recruiter
in the conspiracy,

and his wife, Linda Baker,
went up to Indianapolis

to meet her sister, Brenda,
who was refusing

to give up her share
of the money.

- She's supposed to be at the
Indianapolis, Indiana, airport.

- You're talking $500,000...
- Yeah, it's a lot of money.

- But people have been killed

for a heck of a lot less
than $500,000.

And in one of the calls,
Baker says--

they were talking
about the airport--

and he said, well,
we can't do it there.

Well, "do it" could mean
a lot of things,

but it could also mean
something--something bad.

One of these abundance of
cautious working theory was,

we're gonna go up there,
and we're gonna kill her.

We may not do it
in the airport,

but we're gonna do it.

So they're not gonna
let her cash this check

and take the damn money.

- And so now, we're thinking,
well, we can't let anybody

get injured in this thing, so--

- Of course.
We have a duty to warn.

- So we get FBI Indianapolis
all over the airport.

- We were still covert.

- The Bakers
convinced her that

you're gonna have to go through
with the original deal.

- They took control over Brenda
and the check

to make sure it was cashed and
that these payments were made.

- Ms. Phenis is probably
not real happy,

but, you know, it didn't
turn out to be a showstopper.

She was safe.

- And we can keep
running the case.

I mean, okay,
$500,000 gets out the door

versus we blow up the case

and take people down
because of this.

I say we keep the case running.
- Sure.

Absolutely.
- We can always--

we can always try to recover
that money another day.

- So after this happens,
what's your guys' next step?

- We pick up calls
from Jacobson

to a guy in Miami
named Andrew Glomb.

We knew from
phone records, too,

that Glomb had also
been a recruiter,

finding people to be fraudulent
winners, a year or two earlier.

So we applied for and got
coverage on Glomb's phone.

So going into August,
we were up on four lines now--

Andrew Glomb, Jerry Jacobson,
Dwight Baker, and Linda Baker.

But we know the game's over.

They're gonna run this game,
and by the end of the month,

we're done.

So we've gotta figure out
pretty damn quick,

what can we do to lock in
other prior winners?

Now, we've got Hughey.

We got Baker. We got Phenis.
We got Jacobson.

We probably got Glomb now.

We got enough on them,
but by this time,

the analysts had
put together a chart

that looked like a
giant spider web, a spaghetti,

with recruiters
and 40, 50 people.

So there was all
these names in there.

So we're going into August,
and we've got that deadline.

We've got the challenge of,
how are we gonna make cases

on all these prior people?

We decide that we
are going to create

a reunion of past winners.

We're gonna invite them all
to, like, Las Vegas,

like an old
organized crime wedding,

where we swoop in and
arrest them all at the wedding.

# #

But we--Tom nixed that.

- We got all these people.

We gotta fly them out there.

We gotta put them up.

Unfortunately, the bureau
still had budgets back then,

and I'm thinking, let's see.

Great idea,
just, you know, think about--

pare it down a little bit.

- They agree to do publicity
as part of winning.

- George Chandler of Walhalla
just won $1 million

in the Hatch, Match,
and Win game.

- So that sort of morphed into,

let's create
a fake production company,

go out, promise these people

the reunion of winners
in Vegas.

I mean, we can promise them
the moon and the stars.

We're not gonna deliver it.

Gonna go out to where
they're at, and hey,

we're gonna film you
describing how you won

that exciting, great day.

And then we're gonna
put it on the big screen,

and you'll be a star in Vegas.

We got a couple of things
going for us, right?

In McDonald's, you had
a person named Amy Murray...

Who was a natural
at doing this kind of stuff.

The bureau has all kinds
of great videographers.

- So you gave
the approval then, Tom...

- Yes.

- To do
the undercover operation.

- Yeah, this was the next best,
you know, a lot cheaper.

- Production company is gonna
be called Shamrock Productions.

With the byline
'Cause You're Just Lucky.

If you think about the--

the little snide--
the dig there.

- So what was the rationale
behind doing

the undercover operation?

- This was to get the evidence
for court later on,

to hook these people into,
this is what they've said.

# #

- We had this list
of past winners.

What we didn't have
is how they told McDonald's

that they won,
when they would call in.

McDonald's didn't
keep records of that.

We had to sort of recreate
and get them on record

asserting, falsely,
how they won.

- Who did you approach?

- We did three of these.

One of the first ones
was Buddy Fisher.

He was a winner--
million-dollar winner.

He was Robin Colombo's father.

Robin Colombo was married
to Jerry Colombo.

He won a car.

- I wasn't working, and this
Sunday, as a matter of fact,

it wasn't a whole lot
of work to do.

So, you know, just browsing
through the Sunday paper,

as I am wont to do.

- He's sweating
and stumbling...

- Uh...and...

- And can't
go through the details

of how he won, because he's
making it up on the fly.

- I'm leaking.

First, I wasn't
so sure about it.

I went to a lawyer.

I did.

Well, you know, you need
to protect yourself.

And, uh--

- No, I don't.

- No.

It was--oh, over in, uh--oh.

- Theoretically, it's the
biggest day of his life.

I won like $70
in a lottery once,

and I remember
every moment of that.

That was $70.

I mean, this guy was
a million-dollar winner.

- Now, had your wife or
anyone in your whole family

ever won anything
like that before?

- No.
- Never?

- Nothing.

- So this was big.

- Huge.

- So you're the luckiest one
in your family, huh?

- Yes. Yes.

- So has any of your
kids or grandkids

played Monopoly or tried
to win or anything like that?

- Yes.
And we still do.

- Oh, good.
- And we still do. Yes.

- Have any of them
won any cars or--

- Jerry Colombo
won a Dodge Viper.

- No.

I think I won a cheeseburger.

- They did Gloria Brown
right after that.

Gloria Brown was friends
with Robin Colombo.

# #

Gloria Brown was
pretty amenable--

- But very hesitant.
- Hesitant.

- Gloria, do you recall
the person that you spoke to

at the counter when you--

- No, I sure don't.

- You watch it,
and there's another--

another element of
kind of making up a story.

- But to say that the tapes
were damaging

would be an understatement.

The only truth that they told
in the whole thing

was probably their name.

- If you could just write,
"Thanks McDonald's and--

- Thanks a million.
- Oh, that's good.

Thanks a million. That's good.

- Thanks a million, McDonald's.

I got my McDonald's million at
Hilton Head in South Carolina.

And it made me a millionaire.

- And then Hoover.
- Hoover, yeah.

- Hoover had been recruited
by Andrew Glomb

in 2000 to claim $1 million.

- Got the "People" magazine.

And inside,
we had the Monopoly game

with the Instant $1 Million
winner.

And it was great.
It's fantastic.

- And I mean,
Hoover was over the top

enthusiastic, laughing.

- He's smiling.
He looks like a Cheshire cat.

It's great, and he--

- It was almost
as if he had rehearsed it.

- And he could kind of
keep the same story going,

but it was just
so preposterous.

- I went to the beach
for a while,

and I was a little klutzy.

The "People" magazine and my
towel fell out of the backpack,

fell into the water,
and got all wet.

I ended up throwing those away
on the way to the car.

And then after,
I was coming home,

I decided to stop
and get provisions for dinner.

And I never got a chance
to read the magazine.

And there it was right there
at the checkout stand,

so I bought one.

And when I got home,
I was leafing through it,

and we had
the McDonald's Monopoly game.

And the first one
I peeled off, I believe,

was Pennsylvania Avenue,
and the second one I peeled off

was $1 Million
Instant Prize Winner.

And it was like, wow,
is this for real?

- And then they take them
to the beach.

- Even before they
went up there,

they had made $1 million check.

- Hoover is holding up
the sign.

Hey.

- And some kid comes running
by and grabs the check

and starts running
down the beach.

# #

Probably high on marijuana,
because he was

running the zigzag pattern--

- In the sand.

- And of course, Mathews is--
you know,

he's chasing them
through the sand there.

And finally tackles him,
knocks him over.

Kid's probably got, you know,
a mouth full of sand,

and he was so out of it, he
just--he just left him there.

Got the check.
- One of the funniest parts.

We're up on Glomb's phone.

They do the Shamrock
Production shoot,

and Hoover gets
on the phone immediately

and calls Andrew Glomb
to brag about how well he did.

- Academy Award winner.
- Yeah.

We're sitting there
listening to this.

We know from talking to Doug
and everybody up there

what's going on.

I mean, it wrapped up
with a bow.

- How did Jerry
kind of recruit these people?

- He would initially
recruit people that he met,

he knew, he trusted.

And then from there,
these recruiters--

Glomb, Baker, there was others
before that--would sort of

prove themselves
by bringing in winners,

almost like a multi-level
marketing thing.

You can move up the chain.

The one that comes to mind
is Dwight Baker.

Baker recruits Hughey.

We're watching phone records.

All of a sudden, we start
seeing all this traffic

back and forth between Hughey
and a guy named John Davis

in Texas right around
that time period

and conversations
with Hughey and Baker.

So Hughey had become
a winner, and then

progressed really quickly
and became a recruiter

not four months later.

- We knew who the winner was
before McDonald's.

- We told McDonald's...
- Get ready.

- Really good chance that a guy
named John Davis

is gonna call in...
- And be the next winner.

- And be the next winner
at the end of April--

at the end of August.

And sure enough,
he was the guy.

# #

- How did Jerry Jacobson
get his hands

on these winning game pieces
in the first place?

- The printer would bring
the high value piece--

and there are several people
around watching this--

high value piece,
and then they mix it up

with about 15, 20 other pieces.

So it's all mixed up
in this envelope.

The envelope gets
sealed, signed,

and there's a seal
that goes on it,

and then it goes into
a briefcase locked, handcuffed.

I don't know if it was
handcuffed to Jerry,

or he was supposed
to hang on to it.

And then Jerry
and an independent CPA

would travel to the region
that that high value piece

was supposed to be put
into circulation

in the factory production line
that makes McDonald's cups

and French fry packets.

And they've got
20 of these pieces,

and they've also got
400 other--

whatever the name--
- Non-winners.

- Non-winners.

And then they just mix them all
up, and then they're going on.

The seal that went
on the envelope,

he had somehow mistakenly
gotten a roll of them,

so he had spares to use.

So when they were traveling,
evidently,

he would break away,
go into the bathroom,

switch out a similar envelope
with a seal on it,

now with useless pieces,
take the envelope

with the winning piece, stick
it in his bulletproof vest

that he carried.

- Jacobson would then
give these winning pieces

to his recruiters,
who would find people

to claim the winning prizes.

- Every piece that Jerry stole
and put into his network,

his spaghetti chart,
ultimately,

would net him money.
- Money.

- Anywhere--
$50,000, $90,000, $200,000.

So it was pretty lucrative
for him and everybody else.

The recruiters would also
be paid 50 grand or more

by the winners they recruited.

- So you're up against the gun.

You guys do this ruse,
this undercover operation,

and then from there,

you're gonna propose
for the takedown?

Is that the next steps?

- Early August,
we started putting together

the plan for the takedown.

We put together this huge EC,

15, 20 pages,
background on the case.

A lot of the work
and the activity

was going on in South Carolina,
Greenville, to be specific.

This thing gets sent
to Columbia

headquarters, city division.

And from there, it's gotta
be faxed to the Greenville RA.

We get a call from a small
newspaper in Greenville,

and they say, we've got
this secret EC document,

and we don't think
we're supposed to have it.

- Oops.
- Whoops.

- Oh, no.
- What do you mean?

Well, it came through
on our fax.

- Oh, shit.
- Oh, shit.

- I mean, we are right at the
cusp of taking this thing down.

Everybody is in the--

in the starting blocks
ready to--

ready to pounce,
and one fax could just

undermine the whole operation.

- Second time fax has
almost screwed us.

- Exactly. So what happened?

- Somebody punched
the wrong button,

and you know, it went
to the wrong place.

- Speed dial.

- That one--that one
I got a little--

a little heartburn with,
you know?

- Sure.

- So Devereaux got together
with the SAC in Columbia,

and they went over
to the newspaper.

- It turned out it was a,
I think, a small,

almost family-owned,
longtime newspaper.

- And on bended knee, Devereaux
and the SAC begged and pleaded

and cajoled and finally
got him to hold the story.

- When we eventually got over
that potential land mine

disaster, the plan
for the takedown,

which was set for August 21st,
was arrest of the main eight.

Jerry Jacobson, Dwight and
Linda Baker, Brenda Phenis,

Michael Hoover,
John Davis, Andrew Glomb,

and Ronald Hughey,
but at the same time,

interviews of about
20 other winners.

The idea was, we're gonna
do this all at once.

We know what you did.

You just need to tell us.

- How many teams do you have?

- Eight arrest teams.
- How many states were you in?

- Five or six.

# #

- Jacksonville agents
were on every arrest team,

a lot of the interview teams,
so we--

you know, we were
sending people out all over.

Well, we had a big command post
in Jacksonville

to tally up
who's been arrested,

who's been interviewed.

- So I snuck away from the
command post for a few hours--

- During the arrest.
- During the takedown.

He's learning about it now
probably for the first time.

Statute's expired by now.

Buddy Fisher worked
really close to the office,

so it was easy to go over there
and interview him.

And I remember this.

As soon as we went to see him
and sat down, it was,

you know, typical line, you
know why we're here, don't you?

And you wait.

- Uh.

- And, is this
about McDonald's?

Yep.
- Good guess.

- He got the Shamrock
Production visit, like,

a month earlier,
but he never heard about

his invite to Vegas.

Maybe he figures
he failed the audition,

but I think he thought
something else was up.

- But there was larceny
in all of their hearts.

I mean, they knew
this was a hokey--

a hokey deal.

I mean, they knew
it was criminal activity.

I went up to Washington with--

Tom Pickard was the acting
director at the time--

and we did a press conference
with Ashcroft.

Especially for Jacksonville,
this was a big deal.

- This morning, the agents
of the Federal Bureau

of Investigation arrested eight
individuals in several states

for their involvement
in a nationwide scheme

to defraud McDonald's
Corporation and its customers.

All of these individuals
are charged with conspiracy

to commit mail fraud.

- We were able
to identify Jerry Jacobson

as the central figure
in the distribution

of the fraudulently obtained
game pieces.

- The FBI says
Jacobson was paid

in $50,000 kickbacks
from the winners

recruited by his friends.

On million dollar payouts,
for example,

some of the fraudulent
winners allegedly paid

when they got their first of 20
yearly installments, $50,000.

- So from the start
of McDonald's putting out

this Monopoly game to the...
- End.

- End, how much money was
fraudulently won in this scam?

- The total was
around $24 million

that we could account for.

- And I'm gonna say
we recovered

damn near that much
in cash and assets.

There were victims
beyond McDonald's in this,

significant victims.

Simon Marketing, who ran
the promotional games

for McDonald's,
well, they went out

of business because of this.

Dittler Brothers,
who printed all

the McDonald's Monopoly game
pieces were impacted as well.

1,600 people approximately...

- Lost their jobs.
- Lost their jobs.

- These people lost
their jobs because

of one bad apple in Simon
Marketing, Uncle Jerry.

# #

- So looking back,
what comes to mind for you

thinking about this case?

- You work drug cases,
and even if you're successful,

you take down the leader
or the kingpin, whoever.

His seat doesn't even--
doesn't even get cold

before somebody else moves in.

Whereas in this case,
we took it down,

and there's no--nobody else
is gonna step in.

So that was a big positive.

- It was a fun case, you know?

We did a lot of unusual things.

- Uh...
- Um...

Hey.

- And we dodged a few bullets.

- And nobody died.
- And nobody died.

And it's something
that, you know,

you can laugh and joke about,
I mean, at this point in time.