The Florida Times-Union describes how Jacobson made off with the valuable real estate: By 1995, the former police officer was stealing all the pieces of value. In 1989, two years in the running of the promotion, Jacobson stole a piece worth $25,000 and gave it to his stepbrother.

Simon’s internal policies called for 2 or 3 people to oversee the production and distribution of game pieces, but Jacobson alone oversaw the distribution of Monopoly pieces around the country.

Jacobson worked as head of security at Simon Marketing Inc, the company entrusted with running almost every McDonalds promotion, from Happy Meal toys to the Monopoly game. When someone ignorant of the odds agreed, he or she sends the rare piece and never hears from the scammer again. The setup draws scammers, who put out Craigslist ads or post on forums that they have Park Place and want to team up with someone who has the (rare) Boardwalk piece. So thousands of people with 3 out of the 4 railroads are all searching for Short Line Railroad, with only 1 in 150 million odds of finding it. Rather than make each piece appear with the same probability, McDonalds makes one piece from each set extremely rare. But everyone is just one game piece away from a grand prize. An entire generation of parents has argued with children who demand McDonalds because they just need one more property to win. To win one, customers need to collect a full set of properties from the Monopoly game. The Monopoly setup, however, makes the odds behind grand prizes more deceiving. But some years no one wins the $1MM grand prize. The creators of McDonalds Monopoly do the same, doling out lots of sodas and medium fries to 1 in 4instant winners. Promotions usually achieve this by giving out lots of cheap prizes and only a handful of grand prizes. Prizes need to be ubiquitous enough that the game is fun, but grand prizes need to be few and far between so that the bump in sales more than offsets the cost of the prizes.

The key to a successful promotion like McDonalds Monopoly lies in the probabilities. This the story of Jerome Jacobson, the man who cheated at McDonalds Monopoly to a tune of $20 million. The promotion is so successful, McDonald’s has run it for two decades.īut from 1995 to 2001, the game had only one real winner. People visit McDonalds each year - even fast food haters - just to collect the pieces and take a shot at winning $1MM. Of course it’s more likely you’ll instantly win a less lucrative prize like a Filet-O-Fish. The packaging on McDonalds products has properties from the board game, and if you get, say, both Boardwalk and Park Place, you win a $1 million prize. The McDonald’s Monopoly game is one of the most successful marketing promotions of all time.Įvery year, for a limited time only, you can win big money collecting Monopoly pieces.

Mcdonald’s monopoly rigged