HBO's Newest Documentary Is About The $24 Million Scam Surrounding McDonald's Monopoly Game And People Are Hooked

From Delish

You may remember that McDonald's used to (and in some places, still does) run a contest inspired by the board game Monopoly. But what you may not know is that one man is believed to have orchestrated a cheating ring around the game that ran for 12 years and ran up a tab of $24 million. Yes, REALLY. That scam is currently being covered in a new documentary for HBO called McMillion$, and it has people enthralled.

The documentary, which is executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, premiered on Monday night and people can't stop talking about it. If you've never played the McDonald's Monopoly game yourself, here's a quick explainer: Things like your fries or drink would have a pull tab on them and once you peeled it off, it would reveal either an instant win or a Monopoly piece similar to the ones you'd find on a board. Most of it was small potatoes (literally, I won a lot of fries), but if you got the right instant win, or the right combo of pieces, you could win some serious cash and prizes.

The game was a huge hit for the fast food giant, with people clamoring to buy more food to get pieces. Some pieces were even re-sold on Ebay, according to The Daily Beast. The doc follows the story of Jerry Jacobson, a security guard for Simon Marketing, which produced the pieces, who figured out to how to make money rigging the game.

This is how he did it: He would cut out the big winning pieces (ones that would win you things like cars or $1 million) and slip them into an envelope, where he was then to transport them to various McDonald's locations. But he started pocketing the pieces, replacing the anti-tamper seals, and selling them. He would then also get a cut of the winnings. In the end, more than 50 people were convicted as part of this plot, according to The New York Times.

You'll need to watch the six-part documentary to get the whole story (and/or read The Daily Beast's excellent reporting!) but you could see why people would be hooked on it! Viewers also seem to be particularly in love with FBI agent Doug Matthews, who rocked a gold suit when meeting with McDonald's reps because he was "bored."

McMillion$ airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on HBO.

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