For more than ten years, millions of Americans tore open McDonald's Monopoly game pieces at the counter, certain a rare sticker could turn a cheap lunch into a life-changing jackpot.
The odds were advertised as astronomical, one in hundreds of millions for the top prize, yet the game had run for years without producing anywhere near that many verified big winners.
Behind the scenes, a man named Jerry Jacobson worked as director of security for the printing company hired to produce every winning piece and every losing piece in the game.
Jacobson had unrestricted access to the winning pieces before they were mailed out, and starting in the early 1990s he simply began pulling the big prizes for himself.
Rather than claim prizes directly, he recruited relatives, friends, and even mob associates to pose as random winners, splitting the payouts and keeping the scheme hidden for years.
The FBI eventually built a case codenamed Operation Final Answer, tracing an unusual cluster of winners back to addresses and phone numbers connected to Jacobson's own family and friends.
By the time authorities made arrests in 2001, Jacobson's operation had quietly diverted more than twenty four million dollars in prizes over nearly a decade before anyone noticed.
