McMillions (2020): Season 1, Episode 2 - Episode 2 - full transcript
Hoping to unmask "Uncle Jerry," the FBI investigates two prominent figures they believe are connected to the scam; Agent Mathews and McDonald's employee Amy Murray pay a visit to a prior ...
From 1989 to 2001,
there were almost
no legitimate winners
in the McDonald's Monopoly game.
I mean, how crazy bullshit
is that?
McDonald's makes french fries
and apple pies.
They don't make marketing.
Simon Marketing actually
produced and came up with
the Monopoly game.
The FBI told us the game pieces
are being stolen.
And the person
who's controlling this
is this Uncle Jerry.
We had this one shot.
I wanted to burn down
the criminal enterprise.
So, we were on the wire taps
to find out the depths
of this scheme.
We did an analysis
of past winners' phone records.
All these phone calls
include Jerome Jacobson,
also known as Jerry Jacobson,
head of security
for Simon Marketing.
- Hey, here's a man who looks
like he has something to say.
- Are we all set, Ronnie?
- Well, I bet!
Oh!
- Hey, careful.
- Looks like he's got flubber
shoes on, too, today.
- A wonderful anonymous donor
mailed a Monoa Monopoly
game piece,
and right here
in the middle of it
was a little winning ticket
of $1 million.
- Whoa!
- Hey, wow!
- Somebody won
a $1 million Monopoly game
at McDonald's,
and God bless him,
decided to send that money
to the children of St. Jude.
- Well, this is a great day.
Uh, we and McDonald's have
a game going,
which, uh, a person won
a game piece
inin Texas and mailed it
to St. Jude's anonymously
and, uh, McDonald's worked out
a way to pay the game piece
even though it couldreally
can't be transferred.
- It's just a wonderful
Christmas story
that someone would give
that way anonymously
and not want any recognition,
uh, for the children
at St. Jude.
- The McDonald's Monopoly game
went back to 1987
and so we didn't know how long
the contest was fixed.
- St. Jude's was listed
as a winner which,
you know, was, uh,
certainly an anomaly.
We didn't know if this
is part of this conspiracy.
- We didn't know how
Jerry Jacobson
was involved
in this fraud scheme
or if he was Uncle Jerry.
I mean, at first you just think
it's an alias name
but at least it was
at least half of the name.
- Hey, help me,
Fred, will you?
Ooh, this is heavy.
Ooh, ooh!
- Odds of finding
the winning piece
were one
in more than 206,000,000.
Odds of someone giving it away,
Heaven only knows.
- My name is Marvin Braun.
I live in Miami, Florida.
Jerry Jacobson
is my stepbrother, yes.
He is my stepbrother.
- Yeah, I mean we grew up as
I don't think
brother brothers,
but we grew up close.
We're only a week apart
in age.
His dream in life was always
becoming an FBI agent.
- There I was out
on my first assignment.
- It never worked out,
but it's funny.
It's a funny story.
If you said to me
to describe this story,
I would say,
"Don't believe it,"
but it's true.
Don't believe it.
Just weird.
It's just weird
how it happened.
He had discussed about
the game pieces one time.
I think it was 1989
and we had discussed
how, you know, hehe would
be able to possibly get
the $25,000 game piece,
and, um, you know,
if we could do something with
it and, you know, whatever.
A month later
or six weeks later
I don't remember
he showed up with a piece.
And he says, uh, cash it in.
There was an 800 number
to, uh, call, which I did,
and they gave me instructions.
I went to the post office.
I registered itwhatever the
words are at the post office
and everything else,
and I sent it in.
I think I was the first person
to turn a ticket in.
He knew I knewI, um
I'd keep my mouth shut.
I guess that's the right way
of saying it.
He trusted me with it,
you know?
- No.
No.
- So we were looking into
Simon Marketing's
"Jerry Jacobson."
Once we got
the title III surveillance
listening to phone calls,
we had him on the wire
all day, all night.
- So we had thought,
"Hey, this may be
the main guy."
So then we started focusing
more on trying
to figure out who he was.
- After really digging into
this Jerome Jacobson
background,
we discovered among
other things that, you know,
he had been a police officer
inin Hollywood, Florida.
- To become a police officer,
you have to be
a level-headed individual.
Honesty and trustworthiness
is paramount.
Jerry Jacobson was a patrolman
and, uh, he came to me in
the parking lot one morning.
At that time I was
investigating the death
of a newborn baby.
We had no leads at all,
and Jerry told me that he had
some psychic friends
that read about the case
and that they were willing
to assist.
My reaction was I was grateful
and I did take him up
on the offer.
I don't know that there's
anything wrong
having psychics as friends.
I thought that
was pretty wonderful.
- I met Jerry at the
Hollywood Police Department.
We both were on the same squad
and we started about
the same time,
and one day he showed up
at my front door
to inform me that my boyfriend
was cheating on me.
So that's how I met Jerry.
We dated off and on,
and there were some good times
and some bad times,
but, um, we got married
in Tennessee.
I think it was '81,
and Jerry became a stepfather
to my sons.
- This big long silence isn't
gonna be in there, is it?
One day he started to shave
and he couldn't reach
all the way up to shave.
It was difficult,
and it was getting
more difficult
every time he tried to move.
By noon,
he couldn't lift his arms...
He couldn't lift his arms,
period,
so I took him to the hospital.
And they ran the test
for multiple sclerosis
and Guillain-Barré
and a couple of other things
and he had the Guillain-Barré.
He says he's got MS...
But technically
it was Guillain-Barré
and II took leave
from my work
and spent time
at the hospital with him
'cause his mother was gonna
put him in a nursing home.
I gave him 15 minutes a day
to feel sorry for himself
and after that 15 minutes,
we're gonna work,
'cause I felt like
if we kept working,
maybe we could stay ahead
of the paralysis.
So I fed him
and gave him showers
and walked him
up and down the hall
and all that stuff.
After six or eight months,
he finally turned around
before it got
to his respiratory system.
It was getting there,
but it didn't quite take over.
Soand then the next day;
after the next couple of days,
it stabilized,
and then started turning around
a little bit.
- There's always a question,
why somebody leaves a
law enforcement career early.
Many times there's
a good reason,
butbut there's always
a question.
It's not typical.
Um, andand in his case,
you know,
we learned that he had,
you know
he had aa condihealth
condition or an accident that,
you know,
had him go out, I guess,
on a disability.
- He moved to Atlanta because
there was a doctor in Atlanta
or a hospital that dealt
with nothing but MS.
I think the MS really threw
his life completely
because I think he always
wanted to be
in law enforcement,
and having the MS
completely changed his life.
- We moved
to Atlanta together.
I got a job shortly after
we came here in security.
He started getting better...
And at that point,
he wanted to go back to work.
Simon Marketing offered him
a job working security
for the Monopoly promotions.
- We as the FBI could not
and logically would not
march into Simon Marketing
and start asking questions
about Jerry and that process.
You know, generally when the
FBI starts asking questions,
people, you know
people get
get a little spun up
and wonder, really, why.
- We were working hand in hand
with McDonald's
just trying to figure out
how much they knew
about Simon Marketing.
Surprisingly, McDonald's
didn't know much
about the process that
Simon Marketing went through
with their promotional games.
- I wasn't familiar
with Simon Marketing at all
until this investigation began.
After that meeting
with the FBI,
I realized that I needed
to learn a little bit more
about Simon Marketing
and the promotion,
so I set up a meeting
with Simon Marketing
under the guise of
trying to learn how
the security procedures
were in place.
- We were able
to enlist McDonald's
to do these inquiries
on our behalf,
but I think also
on their behalf, too.
- Yeah, yeah, no.
Wewe wouldwe would have
not told McDonald's.
Because if we're wrong,
we'vewe've sullied
somebody's reputation
for no good reason.
- I don't know how much
he was making at Simon.
His wife was working.
I don't know
if he needed the money.
- No, I think he said
he has a contact
to get them or something.
I think it was contact.
It was not him.
It was not him.
It was not him.
- Hego ahead.
I'm
- Hehehe gave me the idea
it was not him
stealing the tickets,
that he had a contact how
to get the tickets.
I was under the impression
Jerry was the security for it.
In other words,
that another person
was taking the tickets
or whatever.
I wasn't sure.
I thought Jerry was security.
- When I met
with Simon Marketing,
we went through
the security procedures
and the procedures
at the printing press.
They actually had
a very thorough
and comprehensive operation
for ensuring the security
and integrity of their
of our game pieces,
so I was very pleased
with what I saw.
- McDonald's reports
that at the facility there,
it was incredibly secure
and that this idea
thatthat things
areare loose
or that they could walk
right out of there
waswas, you know,
almost impossible.
Highly unhighly,
highly unlikely.
The obvious question was
how this whole process worked.
How werehow were game
pieces printed, distributed?
- Simon Marketing had these
game pieces made
just north of Atlanta
by a secure printing business.
- My name is Jack Sisk.
I actually was working
in security at Dittler
whenfor around 15 years,
actually.
- My name's Perry Pealock,
and I was
the bindery supervisor.
- Name's Doyle Grant,
and I was shipping clerk.
- My name's Gilben Peeples,
and I was the parch clerk
in the maintenance department.
- Dittler Brothers Printing
was a very secure
printing company,
and that's how we got into
the lottery business
and into scratch-off games.
- And I think that's
one of the reasons
that we got the U.S.
postage stamp job
because the federal
government said,
"Hey, this place
is really secure,"
'cause we got that
and it went real well.
- And then it grew from there.
You know,
three or four years,
and McDonald's millions
and millions of dollars
to pay to print all this stuff.
- I was the director
of security
for Dittler Brothers
between 1987 and 2000,
and I worked with Jerry when
they were running Monopoly
because Simon and Dittler
were real close.
- We had people
in Dittler Brothers 24 hours.
The Dittler Brothers facility
was very secure.
You had to go through
a guard shack
to get into the facility,
you had to sign in when
you got into the facility,
then you had to go through
another guard
to get into the room
where the state lotteries
are being produced
along with our game pieces.
- When Monopoly was running,
it would just about take
everything
in the plant running,
it would get so big.
That was our largest customer
by a long shot.
You're talking
hundreds of millions
of game pieces,
you know.
- When we did press runs
of winners,
we pretty much surrounded
the press.
They had alarm systems.
They had cameras.
The gate was opened
and it wasn't us,
alarm would go off.
- Well, we had a big vault
we had the winners in.
- There were two locks.
It's almost like, you know,
back in the Cold War,
you'd have two people
in a missile silo,
and it takes two.
- Jerry was in there for Simon
to make sure that
Dittler Brothers
were doing their jobs.
Jerry would stand behind
and look over their shoulder
and get their combination.
Then he would raise holy hell
because we allowed him
to do that.
- All the game pieces
that were produced
by Dittler Brothers
were loaded on trucks.
- Security would actually
physically lock
the back of the truck.
- Once that truck left,
we normally would get
on an airplane,
fly to that city,
and meet the truck
the next morning
to unlock it,
break the seal,
verify what was loaded.
- My name's Brian Litteral.
I worked
security/quality control
for the games that McDonald's
usually ran.
We would bring
the labels out
free drinks,
free fries
and the two pieces
would assemble together,
the label on top of the cup.
The higher-level winners was
done by a completely different
more secure process.
I would usually get a call
saying that Jerry was gonna be
coming in with, uh,
an independent auditor.
- Dittler Security
has to be there,
Simon has to be there,
the auditor has to be there,
and the customer service rep
has to be there,
and they all witnessed
the winner run.
- The auditor would unlock
the suitcase.
There was an envelope inside
with signatures across
the seal
to make sure that it was still
the same contents
as to when it was packaged,
and inside there,
there would be a certain
number of seeds.
This is what a seed
would look like,
one of which
was a high-level winner.
The rest were commons,
and then I would insert them
in various production lines.
- No one knew,
and no one was supposed
to know,
where the high-level
winner was.
- So you go into
the McDonald's,
you open up the game piece,
and maybe you're a instant
$1 million winner.
- I won!
- I won!
- And so when these
game pieces got
to the Simon Marketing
redemption center,
and it goes through
the process of,
"Do we have a real winner..."
They literally would be opened
by a person with gloves
it is all being recorded
and there would always
be an error made
in the winning game piece.
Say, on one corner there's
a little chip
out of the word.
- We also write on
the $1 million winner
a little code on there
with aa black light pen
that you can't see.
So if you show up with a piece
that doesn't have
the code on it,
you're gonna get caught
real soon.
- We were always
a little bit overboard
but, uh, you know,
we protected McDonald's,
andand I think that's
a major reason they used us,
and, uh, of course
Jerry was in there
sort of telling them
how it needed to be built.
- Everybody liked Jerry.
I mean, everybody
in the office liked Jerry.
He wasn't real flashy.
We always had Thanksgiving.
Everybody sort of brought in
a potluck at Thanksgiving,
and Jerry always
brought in ribs,
and his ribs were delicious.
They would just fall
off the bone, you know?
So everybody looked forward
to his ribs,
but, uh, he didn't seem
to be big-headed at all.
- And he was always
very generous.
If he made ribs for himself,
he would make them
for the whole office.
Jerry washe's
a generous fellow.
We got divorced,
and even when
he was married again
and I needed something,
he would be right there.
There's nothing stingy
about him at all.
After we got divorced,
it was like even though
he was the head
of security for Simon,
he still worked
under my guidelines
in Dittler Brothers.
I told him
if he stole anything,
I'd kill him.
- Exciting.
I'm not gonna lie.
It was exciting
and everything else,
and, uh, you know,
I deposited it,
and we split it.
Down the road,
he came to me and he said that
he could do bigger pieces.
II'd not cashed in anything
but a $25,000 ticket,
and I didn't want
any parts of them.
At that time,
I was going to New York, like,
every Tuesday morning
and coming home
every Wednesday night.
I was buying maternity clothes
in New York
for my maternity shop.
So I approached two people who
were manufacturers in New York
that I dealt with for
many, many, many years
and I approached them
if they would be interested
in possibly doing
a deal with Jerry.
- I'd rather not mention names.
- No.
There weI'm pretty s
well, maybe his nieces
and nephews.
No, I never heard anybody
refer to him as Uncle Jerry.
- For a while,
the question was,
"Well, who is Uncle Jerry?"
Oh, well there's a Jerry
Jacobson working at Simon.
That must be Uncle Jerry.
But there was always this
inference maybe that
Uncle Jerry waswas somehow
connected to organized crime
Italian organized crime
because the Uncle connotation
gives this kind of
almost like a, you know,
Godfather-ish sort of moniker.
And we found out that
there was another Jerry
involved in this
named Jerry Colombo.
- People everywhere
are winning big
playing the Monopoly game
at McDonald's.
Jerry Colombo won
a Dodge Viper,
and there are two
$1 million prizes left.
- My name is Frank Colombo.
I'm brother
of "Jerry" Gennaro Colombo.
- And I'm Heather Colombo,
and I am Frank Colombo's wife.
- I really wanted him
to keep the car.
You know, I was, you know,
a young guy.
Like, hey, a Dodge Viper?
That'd be pretty damn cool.
Can I borrow it?
Uh, but it was too small.
I mean, he was a big guy.
Um, but it was kinda funny
'cause all offall of my
friends were calling me,
"Hey, your brother won
won the car.
Oh, my God!"
And I'm sitting golaughing
in the back of my head going,
"Yeah, okay, he won the car.
Sure."
You know, it was kinda
it was just amusing
that people believed it.
It worked.
- I'm Robin Colombo.
My husband is Jerry Colombo
Gennaro Colombo.
He was part of the Colombo
crime family.
That commercial,
that almost cost him his life,
because he wasn't supposed
to do a commercial.
- Because he's a ham.
He was even gonna be
in a movie
with Jackie Chan,
as a matter of fact.
I said, "What?
That don't even sound right.
You, a big-ass Sicilian,
and a Chinaman,
in a western?
I said, "Oh, my God."
And it was that
"Shanghai NoonNight,"
whatever it is.
It was that.
- Ma, come get this dog
outta here.
- The Sicilian culture,
of course, is family first
no matter what,
but when I met her,
I didn't want her
to know my last name,
'cause I wanted her to know me
and not my family.
- As a matter of fact,
for the first three
to four months,
I didn't even know his name.
He would go by a completely
different name,
and only did I see a bracelet
on his wrist one day
and I questioned him
on the name that said Frank C.
I mean,
this is entirely different
from the name that he gave me.
- Yes, uh, sheI
went by Tony Ayanatti.
I kinda keep that
in the background, you know?
Not too many people know
who my family is until now.
- Five families
have run New York's
Italian-American mafia.
The names are familiar:
Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese,
Lucchese, and Colombo.
- Police in Brooklyn
pulled a man's body
out of the water
duct-taped inside a blue tarp.
Police say someone also tied
a cinder block
to the victim's ankles.
- My name is Joe Colombo.
I should be treated the same
as anybody else.
- Joe Colombo:
real estate broker,
mafia boss,
and one of the biggest con men
in the history
of organized crime.
- What was your reaction when
you learned that this shooting
had occurred at the Colombos'?
- I just heard, like, shots
about eight shots,
and it's I didn't think
they were shots.
I thought they were
firecrackers.
- His high profile
caused rival mob bosses
to okay his murder.
- The man some called
an underworld boss.
- My brother wasn't the normal,
you know
when you want "The Sopranos,"
you know,
and he's, uhthe guy's talking
to them, you know,
all, "Hey, forget about it,"
and all this kind of nonsense.
- Forget about it.
- Forget about it.
- Ah, forget about it.
- Forget about it.
- That'sthat's the movies.
Now, did he do things
like that?
Absolutely, you know?
But he did it with humor.
You know, more like,
I guess
I guess if you got, uh,
Marlon Brando and Joe Pesci
and put them together,
you'd probably end up
with my brother.
You know?
That's pretty much it.
- That was it.
- Uh, now that
I think about this,
if you got Al Capone
and Rodney Dangerfield
and mashed them together,
you get my brother.
I think that's a good analogy.
- The first time I met Jerry,
we looked at each other,
and it was like the chemistry
between us was crazy.
Um, like you see in a cartoon,
you know,
everything like,
"Boom, boom."
I was having a long-distance
relationship
with a federal agent.
It was not that fun.
And, um,
Jerry was fun,
so I chose him.
My father was military
and strict.
Very strict.
So, yeah, that didn't
go over so well,
but I didn't care.
- I rebelled.
- We were married
in Panama City, Florida.
It wasn't as extravagant
as you would think
because I was pregnant,
so no Catholic wedding.
- My brother Jerry
had his hands
in a lot of different avenues.
He had some, uh, bookieing
things that he was doing
with bookies and what have you.
Uh, he was in charge of, uh,
security at the Taj Mahal
for a few years.
Uh, that was the old,
uh, Trump Taj Mahal.
Uh, he would gamble and, uh,
he would win a lot.
I don't know if it wasthat
was rigged as well.
Possibly.
Everything's rigged in life.
- Trust nothing anymore.
- Yeah.
He was always looking at a way
to make some good easy money.
- You know we had the little
gray M&M as well.
Did you know that?
Okay, I used to smoke
a half a joint a night.
I needed to relax.
I need to put on
something funny
and just let me chill.
Well...
When I would wake up
in the middle of the night,
I had to have something sweet,
so I had Reese's cups
down in the kitchen, right?
So he had to let me know
there was a gray M&M
wrapped in aluminum foil
and he told me,
"Don't touch it."
- The rules say if you find
the gray imposter M&M's,
the winning bag could be worth
$1 million!
- Show me the money!
- And then, um, he says,
"You're also gonna win
a Publishers Clearing House,"
where they come
to your door and knock.
- You have won
$1 million
from Publishers
Clearing House.
- I can't believe it!
- This is the truth!
- Real people really win
the Publishers Clearing House
sweepstakes.
- They're probably gonna say,
"Oh, bullshit."
You know, all that,
but I'm just telling you
what my husband told me.
Jerry wanted something big.
He kept threatening,
"You know, I can go
work for my uncles
up in New York,"
you know?
I'm like,
"Well, you know what?
I think it's time."
You know, you can spend
too much time with somebody
and you don't play golf
and, um,
I mean, the only golf club
he had was about this big
and that was, well...
So he went up north
and he got with Uncle Dominic
who was a Godfather.
- No, they call that
out of respect.
He wasn't an actual uncle,
but he loved my husband
because my husband
was old school
full-blooded Sicilian.
He was hooking him up
with everything.
- My name's Jennifer Ethridge.
Robin Colombo's my mother.
Jerry Colombo is my stepfather.
You couldn't help not
to like him,
and especially with,
um, you know,
his "career" that he was into.
Um, it was definitely
intriguing.
At the time, you know,
he would show me
duffle bags of money
and whip it out.
"Oh, here you go.
Go buy you something nice."
You know?
And then I'd say
when I was about
15, 16 years old,
that's when Jerry got into
the Monopoly thing,
and then that definitely,
you know
it wasthat was a big deal.
He had promised me, um,
a $1 million ticket
whenever I turned 18,
because nobody could have
the same last name.
Sinsince my last name
was Ethridge,
um, you know,
I was gonna be able to
to win a $1 million ticket,
and I was like,
"Oh, heck yeah.
Absolutely."
- Uh, with the Monopoly
situation, um,
Uncle Dominic worked
for family members
in the New York division
and, um, a mutual friend
of his
kind of said,
"Hey, I got this guy
that's doing this and this.
You might be interested,"
and so forth and so on,
and, uh, that was Jerome
from Simon Marketing.
Uh, he was getting
the tickets.
- I don't know.
It could have been.
- I think Jerome possibly
started it on his own
in the beginning,
and then people got wind
of what he was doing
and then they said, "Hey,
let's see if we can use this
as an avenue to expand it,"
and I believe that was brought
to my brother's attention.
Say, "Hey, there's this guy,
he's doing this,
and let's see if we can
expand the, uh, horizon."
- But then Jerry
my Jerry
received a phone call
that Uncle Dominic died.
- Iyou know, you don't
really talk about that.
So anyway, my Jerry
and Jerry Jacobson
became partners on
the Monopoly thing.
- Working any case
is like big puzzle.
Youyou start with
a little piece,
and you've gotta try to vet
whether that is legitimate,
whether it has any merit to it.
- Here we go,
here we go.
The undercover portion
with Michael Hoover
went, you know
went beyond expectations.
We had, you know,
Michael Hoover
calling AJ Glomb.
- We suspected Glomb
was a recruiter,
and he probably didn't
just recruit Hoover.
- Is there a connection
to Uncle Jerry?
- And so we started
looking into him,
and then expanded
into other phone lines
- We had coverage
on many lines,
including Jerry Jacobson,
AJ Glomb,
and a number of the winners.
- The spider web of all, like
we didn't know
how big this was.
Wewe had this Uncle Jer
it was
everything was very general,
nebulous.
So inside thethe wire room,
people sitting there,
getting ready to listen,
and nothing happens, right?
You put
all this effort into it,
and nothing happens.
You're spending your weekend
doing that.
- Unfortunately, in these
conversations on the wire,
the winners mostly
had innocuous conversations
that have nothing
to do with the crime,
so we start coming up with,
"All right,
"how do we get past winners
to recount how they
allegedly won these pieces?"
- I said, "Look,
we can do this.
"Why don't we bring
all these past winners
to Vegas?"
I just said Vegas.
It's all I said.
I don't know
why I picked Vegas.
Probably 'cause
of the fun mere thing,
which is the immediate, "No!"
You know?
But I said,
"Hey, just hear me out.
"Let's do a reunion
of all these past winners.
Let's bring all these people
together to tell us,"
'cause we didn't know
their stories.
Tell us how they won these,
and what they did with it,
that kind of thing,
'cause, you know,
McDonald's has big pockets.
They get some all-expenses
paid trip to Vegas,
balloons falling
and the confetti,
and they love that shit.
You know, the questions were,
"Mathews,
where are you gonna do this?"
Embassy Suites.
Take the whole floor,
rope everything off, right?
Just in case stupid shows up
and you have them all line up
in these rooms
and just arrest them all
at the same time, right?
Great thing.
No.
No way in hell.
No, Doug.
Not gonna do that.
How much is that gonna cost us?
Weyou know, we did have some
budgets to deal with, you know?
So
- I can't remember what it was.
It was like,
"Get him out of here."
You know,
whatever it was.
"I can't believe
you said that."
- Doug is one of the
hardest-working agents
I've ever met in my life.
Very creative, you know?
He'll do anything.
He'll try anything,
and he can talk forever.
He is relentless.
- This idea of
"hosting" a reunion
of past winners in Las Vegas,
you know,
seemed so outlandish up front,
and then we realized,
"Well, wait a minute.
"If you're not gonna
follow through with it,
you can promise"
"You can promise some
pretty elaborate things."
Everybody likes to go to Vegas,
so in preparation
for that wonderful conference
that we were gonna have
all expense paid,
we could contact
these winners,
go out and film them to
capture their so-called story,
and then the carrot was you
get this trip toto Vegas.
- Rick was freaked out
about it,
but I wasn't.
Remember, I'm the guy
that's just, you know,
"You know this is gonna work,"
'cause I know it is, right?
It's all a shamrock, baby.
Shamrock.
- I was the direct contact
with the winners,
so I could legitimize
all of the information.
It was all recorded and,
you know,
it was 17 years ago,
so it was a big tape recorder
that I carried around
in a black McDonald's
briefcase.
I even carried it
to my friend's wedding
in Jackson Hole because,
you know,
I had to be able to tape
the calls whenever they came.
It's like
I had to flip the tapes
I'd be like,
"Can I put you on hold
for a second?"
You know, and then
I'd flip the tapes
and then put them back on.
- Amy would call them up
and say, "Hey, look,
"we're putting together
this media release
"of previous winners,
how they won it,
"what they did with it,
"some of their story that
"it hasn't been really told.
You know, we'll come to you
or you can come to us."
Wherever we were gonna do it,
whatever hotel that you want.
Nobody said no to that.
Most everybody was like,
"Tell me when we're going
to Vegas."
- Obviously we were not
gonna do a reunion,
um, but to the winners,
we told them, uh,
"We're planning this
big reunion,"
and we started
to get them actually
excited to be
going to Las Vegas.
- That was kind of fundamental
that was a bit of a ruse.
We, you knowwe didn't make
reservations in Las Vegas.
I think the pitch was,
you know,
"We're gonna put your story
up on the big screen
"and, you know,
over a dinner,
"and everybody's gonna clap.
Are you interested
in the reunion of winners?"
And of course they are.
Well, locking them into
a story on camera
takes a B minus case
and makes it, you know,
an A, A plus case.
- My name is Doug Astralaga,
I'm an FBI agent,
and I was the lighting guy
for the Shamrock production
in the McDonald's case.
Oh, so this is the little
yeah, I remember this.
- Doug Astralaga was
a relatively young agent.
Uh, you know,
realreal enthusiastic,
uh, charismatic guy.
- When I came out of Quantico,
I wanted to do
something exciting.
- Originally I had stuck him
with the admin agent
on this title III,
which is, uh,
of all the jobs,
probably the most thankless.
I mean, itit really is a
a brutal job,
but there's a reward process
that happens,
so in Doug's case,
we let him
work on the undercover
withwith Doug Mathews
as the
the "lighting guy."
- I had no idea
what I was doing.
I was just using
this light meter
and pressing something
on this going,
"It's great."
This isI still have no idea
how to use one of these.
Excellent, but I do believe
we need more lighting
over here.
Really, the point was
to engage them
in conversations.
That had to reconcile with what
they had originally stated
for McDonald's
to win the prize.
- We recorded these
interviews with them
so the FBI could then
match the timeline
match the facts.
What they originally
told McDonald's,
what they're telling us
on camera,
what the FBI
sort of already knew.
- So that once we had
the evidence showing that
you know you didn't
win this legitimately,
you've lied to the FBI,
and here's the evidence
to prove it,
they would be more willing
to cooperate.
- Yes.
- The FBI was merelywhen
when the FBI took a film crew
to a winner,
that winner had already
contacted Simon Marketing,
hence McDonald's,
claiming to have been a winner.
They're already saying,
"I did this,
and this is how I obtained
this game piece."
An individual could never claim
that's entrapment
because they did it before
the law enforcement
was involved.
Entrapment is to have
law enforcement
put the idea into
the person's head
and to get them to do something
they otherwise
wouldn't have done.
We weren't saying,
"Say this, say this,
and say that."
We were saying,
"How?
What?
Where?
Who?"
Those are just opportunities
for him to fill in the blanks
and tell us
what he wants to tell us.
- Remember just keep
looking at me.
- Okay.
- And if you mess up
or you feel like
you wanna say it again,
we can start all over again.
- Okay.
And I'll try to limit
my hand gestures.
Sometimes it gets in there so
I'll make sure I don't do that.
Um, okay, why don't we go back
to that day that you won
in New Hampshire
and can you just sort of
describe the day for us?
What you were doing in the
morning and at work and then
- It was a, uha summer day.
Uh, no, wait, uh,
I wasn't working.
It was Sunday,
as a matter of fact.
Uh...
And there wasn't a whole lot
of work to do,
so, uh, you know,
just browsing through
the Sunday paper
as I am want to do.
- He was fumbling through it
trying to figure out
how he won that
particular piece.
In reality,
a life experience like that
is drilled into your
memory forever and ever.
Nobody wins $1 million
on a regular basis.
- Uh, I found the insert
and I found the, uh,
little tear-off tab
and I got cold,
very cold.
- He was sweating so bad.
Like, I know at some point, um,
Amy even said to me,
"Every time you ask him
a question,
it's like I gotta get
the towel to dot his head."
It was pouring out...
- Uh
- Because he was lying
about everything.
- Well, suffice it to say,
I justI just got cold
all over.
- No, I, uh, first I wasn't
I wasn't so sure about it.
I went to a lawyer.
- I did.
I wantyou know,
you need to protect yourself
and, uh
- No, I don't.
Uh
- No, it was, um
oh...
Over in, uh
oh...
- You could zoom in,
'cause we did,
zoom in on his forehead
and you could just see
the sweat.
- Yes.
- Okay.
- Yeah, um
- I'm leaky.
- You know,
and I'd say stuff like,
"Hey, so nobody, like,
called you up and said,
"'Hey, we need you to be
a winner,' or whatever?"
And he'd go, "God, no!
I'd never do that!"
And it justjust pours.
The sweat would pour.
I went to a lawyer,
uh, and he advised me to pr
at all cost,
protect my identity.
- It just seemed odd to me that
many of the people I talked to
did not want to come forward
and they seemed
to have knowledge
about what their
legal rights were
about, uh,
being anonymous or not.
- Buddy Fisher was the father
of Robin Colombo,
uh, who was married
to Jerry Colombo.
- I'll never forget it.
I was upstairs
in my bedroom,
and my father called me
and there wasn't
many words exchanged.
He just said,
"I want the big one,"
so I knew what it meant.
- He did get one
of the $1 million tickets
and he had never broken a law
in his entire life.
One stipulation
that my grandfather made,
um, he says, "Okay, If I
if I get this ticket,
I do notI'mI'm not doing
a commercial."
But I remember we would be
getting phone calls,
and they would talk
to my grandfather
and say, "Hey, we're trying
to get all of the, um
the Monopoly winners together
for some kind of reunion,"
or something like that.
I wanna say it was Vegas,
so he did make that trip.
- Now, had your wife or anyone
in your whole family
ever won anything
like that before?
- No, no.
- Never?
- Nothing.
- So this was big.
- Ithuge.
- 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, yes,
and we still do.
- Oh, good.
- And we still do, yes.
- Have any of them won
any cars or
- No.
- I think I won a cheeseburger.
- You she did do one?
I did not know that.
Oh.
Okay, yeah.
I diI did not know that.
Hmm.
Okay.
Wow.
Is that around?
- You know,
the greed was crazy here,
which is great for us.
- One night Jerry and I
were out with our wives
to dinner
and we went
to the men's room together.
That sounds horrible but we
went to the men's room together
and Jerry gave me
a $1 million ticket.
- This is for you.
And I told him,
"I don't wanna be involved.
I really don't."
II had not cashed in anything
but a $25,000 ticket.
I told him I didn't need
the $1 million.
I told him I was out of it.
I said, "Jerry, you know what?
"I don't know what you did
with these guys,
"how much you made,
or anything else.
"There's a time
and there's a place.
Stop," and everything else.
He said, "Well, just do
something with the ticket."
So I took the ticket and I
flushed it down the toilet.
- Didn'tnothing.
Zero.
- I didn't, either.
How's that?
Yeah, how's that?
I didn't either.
No.
I knew I was doing
the right thing.
And Jerry had told me
it was over and that was it.
I'm telling you,
the night I flushed that ticket
down the toilet,
I thought it was over.
I thought it was over.
I swear to you
on everything holy,
I thought it was over.
- If I even suspected
he was taking tickets,
I would have told on him
in a heartbeat,
and he knew it.
And I think that's why
I didn't know it.
II bet that's why
I didn't get a ticket.
After Jerry got sick with this
Guillain-Barré syndrome,
there was something different
in him.
Even though he was
well on the road to mending,
he could have repercussions
later on
being crippled or bedridden
or dead.
So he had nothing to lose
at that point.
- My husband, Jerry,
we got a lot of
my family members involved,
and that isn't all.
My family members that won,
that was just a little piece
of the pie.
You had Al Capone
with the prohibition.
You had Mike Franzese
with the gas,
and then now you have this
the Monopoly.
That's really the highest
three moneymakers
of the mob so far.
My husband picked the winners.
He had tickets.
He flew everywhere.
I think Uncle Jerry may have
even got a little jealous.
- "Uncle Jerry"
is Jerome Jacobson.
And Jerry is my husband,
Jerry Colombo.
Jacobson became Uncle Jerry
because that's
an Italian thing.
My husband gave him that
out of respect.
- If your general opinion
of mankind
is running kind of low
this holiday season,
here's a story that might
make you feel much,
much better about
the human race.
- St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital
in Memphis has received
a very unusual gift.
- Yeah, that'sthat's
Uncle Jerry.
- Hospital officials
are calling this
a gift from an angel
in the true spirit
of the season.
- This is a happy day.
Whoo-hoo!
- If you're out there
and you hear me,
we love you.
My brother took this little,
small operation
and made it huge.
Literally, it was a monopoly
of scams.
The winners,
they would just lie, lie, lie.
We can push, and you never know
when you're gonna hit a wall.
There was things
that nobody knew.
And I just kept it all
to myself.
I thought, "I'm never
gonna get out of this."
I was about to panic.
I had no other option but to
take this process through.
The money got too big.
there were almost
no legitimate winners
in the McDonald's Monopoly game.
I mean, how crazy bullshit
is that?
McDonald's makes french fries
and apple pies.
They don't make marketing.
Simon Marketing actually
produced and came up with
the Monopoly game.
The FBI told us the game pieces
are being stolen.
And the person
who's controlling this
is this Uncle Jerry.
We had this one shot.
I wanted to burn down
the criminal enterprise.
So, we were on the wire taps
to find out the depths
of this scheme.
We did an analysis
of past winners' phone records.
All these phone calls
include Jerome Jacobson,
also known as Jerry Jacobson,
head of security
for Simon Marketing.
- Hey, here's a man who looks
like he has something to say.
- Are we all set, Ronnie?
- Well, I bet!
Oh!
- Hey, careful.
- Looks like he's got flubber
shoes on, too, today.
- A wonderful anonymous donor
mailed a Monoa Monopoly
game piece,
and right here
in the middle of it
was a little winning ticket
of $1 million.
- Whoa!
- Hey, wow!
- Somebody won
a $1 million Monopoly game
at McDonald's,
and God bless him,
decided to send that money
to the children of St. Jude.
- Well, this is a great day.
Uh, we and McDonald's have
a game going,
which, uh, a person won
a game piece
inin Texas and mailed it
to St. Jude's anonymously
and, uh, McDonald's worked out
a way to pay the game piece
even though it couldreally
can't be transferred.
- It's just a wonderful
Christmas story
that someone would give
that way anonymously
and not want any recognition,
uh, for the children
at St. Jude.
- The McDonald's Monopoly game
went back to 1987
and so we didn't know how long
the contest was fixed.
- St. Jude's was listed
as a winner which,
you know, was, uh,
certainly an anomaly.
We didn't know if this
is part of this conspiracy.
- We didn't know how
Jerry Jacobson
was involved
in this fraud scheme
or if he was Uncle Jerry.
I mean, at first you just think
it's an alias name
but at least it was
at least half of the name.
- Hey, help me,
Fred, will you?
Ooh, this is heavy.
Ooh, ooh!
- Odds of finding
the winning piece
were one
in more than 206,000,000.
Odds of someone giving it away,
Heaven only knows.
- My name is Marvin Braun.
I live in Miami, Florida.
Jerry Jacobson
is my stepbrother, yes.
He is my stepbrother.
- Yeah, I mean we grew up as
I don't think
brother brothers,
but we grew up close.
We're only a week apart
in age.
His dream in life was always
becoming an FBI agent.
- There I was out
on my first assignment.
- It never worked out,
but it's funny.
It's a funny story.
If you said to me
to describe this story,
I would say,
"Don't believe it,"
but it's true.
Don't believe it.
Just weird.
It's just weird
how it happened.
He had discussed about
the game pieces one time.
I think it was 1989
and we had discussed
how, you know, hehe would
be able to possibly get
the $25,000 game piece,
and, um, you know,
if we could do something with
it and, you know, whatever.
A month later
or six weeks later
I don't remember
he showed up with a piece.
And he says, uh, cash it in.
There was an 800 number
to, uh, call, which I did,
and they gave me instructions.
I went to the post office.
I registered itwhatever the
words are at the post office
and everything else,
and I sent it in.
I think I was the first person
to turn a ticket in.
He knew I knewI, um
I'd keep my mouth shut.
I guess that's the right way
of saying it.
He trusted me with it,
you know?
- No.
No.
- So we were looking into
Simon Marketing's
"Jerry Jacobson."
Once we got
the title III surveillance
listening to phone calls,
we had him on the wire
all day, all night.
- So we had thought,
"Hey, this may be
the main guy."
So then we started focusing
more on trying
to figure out who he was.
- After really digging into
this Jerome Jacobson
background,
we discovered among
other things that, you know,
he had been a police officer
inin Hollywood, Florida.
- To become a police officer,
you have to be
a level-headed individual.
Honesty and trustworthiness
is paramount.
Jerry Jacobson was a patrolman
and, uh, he came to me in
the parking lot one morning.
At that time I was
investigating the death
of a newborn baby.
We had no leads at all,
and Jerry told me that he had
some psychic friends
that read about the case
and that they were willing
to assist.
My reaction was I was grateful
and I did take him up
on the offer.
I don't know that there's
anything wrong
having psychics as friends.
I thought that
was pretty wonderful.
- I met Jerry at the
Hollywood Police Department.
We both were on the same squad
and we started about
the same time,
and one day he showed up
at my front door
to inform me that my boyfriend
was cheating on me.
So that's how I met Jerry.
We dated off and on,
and there were some good times
and some bad times,
but, um, we got married
in Tennessee.
I think it was '81,
and Jerry became a stepfather
to my sons.
- This big long silence isn't
gonna be in there, is it?
One day he started to shave
and he couldn't reach
all the way up to shave.
It was difficult,
and it was getting
more difficult
every time he tried to move.
By noon,
he couldn't lift his arms...
He couldn't lift his arms,
period,
so I took him to the hospital.
And they ran the test
for multiple sclerosis
and Guillain-Barré
and a couple of other things
and he had the Guillain-Barré.
He says he's got MS...
But technically
it was Guillain-Barré
and II took leave
from my work
and spent time
at the hospital with him
'cause his mother was gonna
put him in a nursing home.
I gave him 15 minutes a day
to feel sorry for himself
and after that 15 minutes,
we're gonna work,
'cause I felt like
if we kept working,
maybe we could stay ahead
of the paralysis.
So I fed him
and gave him showers
and walked him
up and down the hall
and all that stuff.
After six or eight months,
he finally turned around
before it got
to his respiratory system.
It was getting there,
but it didn't quite take over.
Soand then the next day;
after the next couple of days,
it stabilized,
and then started turning around
a little bit.
- There's always a question,
why somebody leaves a
law enforcement career early.
Many times there's
a good reason,
butbut there's always
a question.
It's not typical.
Um, andand in his case,
you know,
we learned that he had,
you know
he had aa condihealth
condition or an accident that,
you know,
had him go out, I guess,
on a disability.
- He moved to Atlanta because
there was a doctor in Atlanta
or a hospital that dealt
with nothing but MS.
I think the MS really threw
his life completely
because I think he always
wanted to be
in law enforcement,
and having the MS
completely changed his life.
- We moved
to Atlanta together.
I got a job shortly after
we came here in security.
He started getting better...
And at that point,
he wanted to go back to work.
Simon Marketing offered him
a job working security
for the Monopoly promotions.
- We as the FBI could not
and logically would not
march into Simon Marketing
and start asking questions
about Jerry and that process.
You know, generally when the
FBI starts asking questions,
people, you know
people get
get a little spun up
and wonder, really, why.
- We were working hand in hand
with McDonald's
just trying to figure out
how much they knew
about Simon Marketing.
Surprisingly, McDonald's
didn't know much
about the process that
Simon Marketing went through
with their promotional games.
- I wasn't familiar
with Simon Marketing at all
until this investigation began.
After that meeting
with the FBI,
I realized that I needed
to learn a little bit more
about Simon Marketing
and the promotion,
so I set up a meeting
with Simon Marketing
under the guise of
trying to learn how
the security procedures
were in place.
- We were able
to enlist McDonald's
to do these inquiries
on our behalf,
but I think also
on their behalf, too.
- Yeah, yeah, no.
Wewe wouldwe would have
not told McDonald's.
Because if we're wrong,
we'vewe've sullied
somebody's reputation
for no good reason.
- I don't know how much
he was making at Simon.
His wife was working.
I don't know
if he needed the money.
- No, I think he said
he has a contact
to get them or something.
I think it was contact.
It was not him.
It was not him.
It was not him.
- Hego ahead.
I'm
- Hehehe gave me the idea
it was not him
stealing the tickets,
that he had a contact how
to get the tickets.
I was under the impression
Jerry was the security for it.
In other words,
that another person
was taking the tickets
or whatever.
I wasn't sure.
I thought Jerry was security.
- When I met
with Simon Marketing,
we went through
the security procedures
and the procedures
at the printing press.
They actually had
a very thorough
and comprehensive operation
for ensuring the security
and integrity of their
of our game pieces,
so I was very pleased
with what I saw.
- McDonald's reports
that at the facility there,
it was incredibly secure
and that this idea
thatthat things
areare loose
or that they could walk
right out of there
waswas, you know,
almost impossible.
Highly unhighly,
highly unlikely.
The obvious question was
how this whole process worked.
How werehow were game
pieces printed, distributed?
- Simon Marketing had these
game pieces made
just north of Atlanta
by a secure printing business.
- My name is Jack Sisk.
I actually was working
in security at Dittler
whenfor around 15 years,
actually.
- My name's Perry Pealock,
and I was
the bindery supervisor.
- Name's Doyle Grant,
and I was shipping clerk.
- My name's Gilben Peeples,
and I was the parch clerk
in the maintenance department.
- Dittler Brothers Printing
was a very secure
printing company,
and that's how we got into
the lottery business
and into scratch-off games.
- And I think that's
one of the reasons
that we got the U.S.
postage stamp job
because the federal
government said,
"Hey, this place
is really secure,"
'cause we got that
and it went real well.
- And then it grew from there.
You know,
three or four years,
and McDonald's millions
and millions of dollars
to pay to print all this stuff.
- I was the director
of security
for Dittler Brothers
between 1987 and 2000,
and I worked with Jerry when
they were running Monopoly
because Simon and Dittler
were real close.
- We had people
in Dittler Brothers 24 hours.
The Dittler Brothers facility
was very secure.
You had to go through
a guard shack
to get into the facility,
you had to sign in when
you got into the facility,
then you had to go through
another guard
to get into the room
where the state lotteries
are being produced
along with our game pieces.
- When Monopoly was running,
it would just about take
everything
in the plant running,
it would get so big.
That was our largest customer
by a long shot.
You're talking
hundreds of millions
of game pieces,
you know.
- When we did press runs
of winners,
we pretty much surrounded
the press.
They had alarm systems.
They had cameras.
The gate was opened
and it wasn't us,
alarm would go off.
- Well, we had a big vault
we had the winners in.
- There were two locks.
It's almost like, you know,
back in the Cold War,
you'd have two people
in a missile silo,
and it takes two.
- Jerry was in there for Simon
to make sure that
Dittler Brothers
were doing their jobs.
Jerry would stand behind
and look over their shoulder
and get their combination.
Then he would raise holy hell
because we allowed him
to do that.
- All the game pieces
that were produced
by Dittler Brothers
were loaded on trucks.
- Security would actually
physically lock
the back of the truck.
- Once that truck left,
we normally would get
on an airplane,
fly to that city,
and meet the truck
the next morning
to unlock it,
break the seal,
verify what was loaded.
- My name's Brian Litteral.
I worked
security/quality control
for the games that McDonald's
usually ran.
We would bring
the labels out
free drinks,
free fries
and the two pieces
would assemble together,
the label on top of the cup.
The higher-level winners was
done by a completely different
more secure process.
I would usually get a call
saying that Jerry was gonna be
coming in with, uh,
an independent auditor.
- Dittler Security
has to be there,
Simon has to be there,
the auditor has to be there,
and the customer service rep
has to be there,
and they all witnessed
the winner run.
- The auditor would unlock
the suitcase.
There was an envelope inside
with signatures across
the seal
to make sure that it was still
the same contents
as to when it was packaged,
and inside there,
there would be a certain
number of seeds.
This is what a seed
would look like,
one of which
was a high-level winner.
The rest were commons,
and then I would insert them
in various production lines.
- No one knew,
and no one was supposed
to know,
where the high-level
winner was.
- So you go into
the McDonald's,
you open up the game piece,
and maybe you're a instant
$1 million winner.
- I won!
- I won!
- And so when these
game pieces got
to the Simon Marketing
redemption center,
and it goes through
the process of,
"Do we have a real winner..."
They literally would be opened
by a person with gloves
it is all being recorded
and there would always
be an error made
in the winning game piece.
Say, on one corner there's
a little chip
out of the word.
- We also write on
the $1 million winner
a little code on there
with aa black light pen
that you can't see.
So if you show up with a piece
that doesn't have
the code on it,
you're gonna get caught
real soon.
- We were always
a little bit overboard
but, uh, you know,
we protected McDonald's,
andand I think that's
a major reason they used us,
and, uh, of course
Jerry was in there
sort of telling them
how it needed to be built.
- Everybody liked Jerry.
I mean, everybody
in the office liked Jerry.
He wasn't real flashy.
We always had Thanksgiving.
Everybody sort of brought in
a potluck at Thanksgiving,
and Jerry always
brought in ribs,
and his ribs were delicious.
They would just fall
off the bone, you know?
So everybody looked forward
to his ribs,
but, uh, he didn't seem
to be big-headed at all.
- And he was always
very generous.
If he made ribs for himself,
he would make them
for the whole office.
Jerry washe's
a generous fellow.
We got divorced,
and even when
he was married again
and I needed something,
he would be right there.
There's nothing stingy
about him at all.
After we got divorced,
it was like even though
he was the head
of security for Simon,
he still worked
under my guidelines
in Dittler Brothers.
I told him
if he stole anything,
I'd kill him.
- Exciting.
I'm not gonna lie.
It was exciting
and everything else,
and, uh, you know,
I deposited it,
and we split it.
Down the road,
he came to me and he said that
he could do bigger pieces.
II'd not cashed in anything
but a $25,000 ticket,
and I didn't want
any parts of them.
At that time,
I was going to New York, like,
every Tuesday morning
and coming home
every Wednesday night.
I was buying maternity clothes
in New York
for my maternity shop.
So I approached two people who
were manufacturers in New York
that I dealt with for
many, many, many years
and I approached them
if they would be interested
in possibly doing
a deal with Jerry.
- I'd rather not mention names.
- No.
There weI'm pretty s
well, maybe his nieces
and nephews.
No, I never heard anybody
refer to him as Uncle Jerry.
- For a while,
the question was,
"Well, who is Uncle Jerry?"
Oh, well there's a Jerry
Jacobson working at Simon.
That must be Uncle Jerry.
But there was always this
inference maybe that
Uncle Jerry waswas somehow
connected to organized crime
Italian organized crime
because the Uncle connotation
gives this kind of
almost like a, you know,
Godfather-ish sort of moniker.
And we found out that
there was another Jerry
involved in this
named Jerry Colombo.
- People everywhere
are winning big
playing the Monopoly game
at McDonald's.
Jerry Colombo won
a Dodge Viper,
and there are two
$1 million prizes left.
- My name is Frank Colombo.
I'm brother
of "Jerry" Gennaro Colombo.
- And I'm Heather Colombo,
and I am Frank Colombo's wife.
- I really wanted him
to keep the car.
You know, I was, you know,
a young guy.
Like, hey, a Dodge Viper?
That'd be pretty damn cool.
Can I borrow it?
Uh, but it was too small.
I mean, he was a big guy.
Um, but it was kinda funny
'cause all offall of my
friends were calling me,
"Hey, your brother won
won the car.
Oh, my God!"
And I'm sitting golaughing
in the back of my head going,
"Yeah, okay, he won the car.
Sure."
You know, it was kinda
it was just amusing
that people believed it.
It worked.
- I'm Robin Colombo.
My husband is Jerry Colombo
Gennaro Colombo.
He was part of the Colombo
crime family.
That commercial,
that almost cost him his life,
because he wasn't supposed
to do a commercial.
- Because he's a ham.
He was even gonna be
in a movie
with Jackie Chan,
as a matter of fact.
I said, "What?
That don't even sound right.
You, a big-ass Sicilian,
and a Chinaman,
in a western?
I said, "Oh, my God."
And it was that
"Shanghai NoonNight,"
whatever it is.
It was that.
- Ma, come get this dog
outta here.
- The Sicilian culture,
of course, is family first
no matter what,
but when I met her,
I didn't want her
to know my last name,
'cause I wanted her to know me
and not my family.
- As a matter of fact,
for the first three
to four months,
I didn't even know his name.
He would go by a completely
different name,
and only did I see a bracelet
on his wrist one day
and I questioned him
on the name that said Frank C.
I mean,
this is entirely different
from the name that he gave me.
- Yes, uh, sheI
went by Tony Ayanatti.
I kinda keep that
in the background, you know?
Not too many people know
who my family is until now.
- Five families
have run New York's
Italian-American mafia.
The names are familiar:
Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese,
Lucchese, and Colombo.
- Police in Brooklyn
pulled a man's body
out of the water
duct-taped inside a blue tarp.
Police say someone also tied
a cinder block
to the victim's ankles.
- My name is Joe Colombo.
I should be treated the same
as anybody else.
- Joe Colombo:
real estate broker,
mafia boss,
and one of the biggest con men
in the history
of organized crime.
- What was your reaction when
you learned that this shooting
had occurred at the Colombos'?
- I just heard, like, shots
about eight shots,
and it's I didn't think
they were shots.
I thought they were
firecrackers.
- His high profile
caused rival mob bosses
to okay his murder.
- The man some called
an underworld boss.
- My brother wasn't the normal,
you know
when you want "The Sopranos,"
you know,
and he's, uhthe guy's talking
to them, you know,
all, "Hey, forget about it,"
and all this kind of nonsense.
- Forget about it.
- Forget about it.
- Ah, forget about it.
- Forget about it.
- That'sthat's the movies.
Now, did he do things
like that?
Absolutely, you know?
But he did it with humor.
You know, more like,
I guess
I guess if you got, uh,
Marlon Brando and Joe Pesci
and put them together,
you'd probably end up
with my brother.
You know?
That's pretty much it.
- That was it.
- Uh, now that
I think about this,
if you got Al Capone
and Rodney Dangerfield
and mashed them together,
you get my brother.
I think that's a good analogy.
- The first time I met Jerry,
we looked at each other,
and it was like the chemistry
between us was crazy.
Um, like you see in a cartoon,
you know,
everything like,
"Boom, boom."
I was having a long-distance
relationship
with a federal agent.
It was not that fun.
And, um,
Jerry was fun,
so I chose him.
My father was military
and strict.
Very strict.
So, yeah, that didn't
go over so well,
but I didn't care.
- I rebelled.
- We were married
in Panama City, Florida.
It wasn't as extravagant
as you would think
because I was pregnant,
so no Catholic wedding.
- My brother Jerry
had his hands
in a lot of different avenues.
He had some, uh, bookieing
things that he was doing
with bookies and what have you.
Uh, he was in charge of, uh,
security at the Taj Mahal
for a few years.
Uh, that was the old,
uh, Trump Taj Mahal.
Uh, he would gamble and, uh,
he would win a lot.
I don't know if it wasthat
was rigged as well.
Possibly.
Everything's rigged in life.
- Trust nothing anymore.
- Yeah.
He was always looking at a way
to make some good easy money.
- You know we had the little
gray M&M as well.
Did you know that?
Okay, I used to smoke
a half a joint a night.
I needed to relax.
I need to put on
something funny
and just let me chill.
Well...
When I would wake up
in the middle of the night,
I had to have something sweet,
so I had Reese's cups
down in the kitchen, right?
So he had to let me know
there was a gray M&M
wrapped in aluminum foil
and he told me,
"Don't touch it."
- The rules say if you find
the gray imposter M&M's,
the winning bag could be worth
$1 million!
- Show me the money!
- And then, um, he says,
"You're also gonna win
a Publishers Clearing House,"
where they come
to your door and knock.
- You have won
$1 million
from Publishers
Clearing House.
- I can't believe it!
- This is the truth!
- Real people really win
the Publishers Clearing House
sweepstakes.
- They're probably gonna say,
"Oh, bullshit."
You know, all that,
but I'm just telling you
what my husband told me.
Jerry wanted something big.
He kept threatening,
"You know, I can go
work for my uncles
up in New York,"
you know?
I'm like,
"Well, you know what?
I think it's time."
You know, you can spend
too much time with somebody
and you don't play golf
and, um,
I mean, the only golf club
he had was about this big
and that was, well...
So he went up north
and he got with Uncle Dominic
who was a Godfather.
- No, they call that
out of respect.
He wasn't an actual uncle,
but he loved my husband
because my husband
was old school
full-blooded Sicilian.
He was hooking him up
with everything.
- My name's Jennifer Ethridge.
Robin Colombo's my mother.
Jerry Colombo is my stepfather.
You couldn't help not
to like him,
and especially with,
um, you know,
his "career" that he was into.
Um, it was definitely
intriguing.
At the time, you know,
he would show me
duffle bags of money
and whip it out.
"Oh, here you go.
Go buy you something nice."
You know?
And then I'd say
when I was about
15, 16 years old,
that's when Jerry got into
the Monopoly thing,
and then that definitely,
you know
it wasthat was a big deal.
He had promised me, um,
a $1 million ticket
whenever I turned 18,
because nobody could have
the same last name.
Sinsince my last name
was Ethridge,
um, you know,
I was gonna be able to
to win a $1 million ticket,
and I was like,
"Oh, heck yeah.
Absolutely."
- Uh, with the Monopoly
situation, um,
Uncle Dominic worked
for family members
in the New York division
and, um, a mutual friend
of his
kind of said,
"Hey, I got this guy
that's doing this and this.
You might be interested,"
and so forth and so on,
and, uh, that was Jerome
from Simon Marketing.
Uh, he was getting
the tickets.
- I don't know.
It could have been.
- I think Jerome possibly
started it on his own
in the beginning,
and then people got wind
of what he was doing
and then they said, "Hey,
let's see if we can use this
as an avenue to expand it,"
and I believe that was brought
to my brother's attention.
Say, "Hey, there's this guy,
he's doing this,
and let's see if we can
expand the, uh, horizon."
- But then Jerry
my Jerry
received a phone call
that Uncle Dominic died.
- Iyou know, you don't
really talk about that.
So anyway, my Jerry
and Jerry Jacobson
became partners on
the Monopoly thing.
- Working any case
is like big puzzle.
Youyou start with
a little piece,
and you've gotta try to vet
whether that is legitimate,
whether it has any merit to it.
- Here we go,
here we go.
The undercover portion
with Michael Hoover
went, you know
went beyond expectations.
We had, you know,
Michael Hoover
calling AJ Glomb.
- We suspected Glomb
was a recruiter,
and he probably didn't
just recruit Hoover.
- Is there a connection
to Uncle Jerry?
- And so we started
looking into him,
and then expanded
into other phone lines
- We had coverage
on many lines,
including Jerry Jacobson,
AJ Glomb,
and a number of the winners.
- The spider web of all, like
we didn't know
how big this was.
Wewe had this Uncle Jer
it was
everything was very general,
nebulous.
So inside thethe wire room,
people sitting there,
getting ready to listen,
and nothing happens, right?
You put
all this effort into it,
and nothing happens.
You're spending your weekend
doing that.
- Unfortunately, in these
conversations on the wire,
the winners mostly
had innocuous conversations
that have nothing
to do with the crime,
so we start coming up with,
"All right,
"how do we get past winners
to recount how they
allegedly won these pieces?"
- I said, "Look,
we can do this.
"Why don't we bring
all these past winners
to Vegas?"
I just said Vegas.
It's all I said.
I don't know
why I picked Vegas.
Probably 'cause
of the fun mere thing,
which is the immediate, "No!"
You know?
But I said,
"Hey, just hear me out.
"Let's do a reunion
of all these past winners.
Let's bring all these people
together to tell us,"
'cause we didn't know
their stories.
Tell us how they won these,
and what they did with it,
that kind of thing,
'cause, you know,
McDonald's has big pockets.
They get some all-expenses
paid trip to Vegas,
balloons falling
and the confetti,
and they love that shit.
You know, the questions were,
"Mathews,
where are you gonna do this?"
Embassy Suites.
Take the whole floor,
rope everything off, right?
Just in case stupid shows up
and you have them all line up
in these rooms
and just arrest them all
at the same time, right?
Great thing.
No.
No way in hell.
No, Doug.
Not gonna do that.
How much is that gonna cost us?
Weyou know, we did have some
budgets to deal with, you know?
So
- I can't remember what it was.
It was like,
"Get him out of here."
You know,
whatever it was.
"I can't believe
you said that."
- Doug is one of the
hardest-working agents
I've ever met in my life.
Very creative, you know?
He'll do anything.
He'll try anything,
and he can talk forever.
He is relentless.
- This idea of
"hosting" a reunion
of past winners in Las Vegas,
you know,
seemed so outlandish up front,
and then we realized,
"Well, wait a minute.
"If you're not gonna
follow through with it,
you can promise"
"You can promise some
pretty elaborate things."
Everybody likes to go to Vegas,
so in preparation
for that wonderful conference
that we were gonna have
all expense paid,
we could contact
these winners,
go out and film them to
capture their so-called story,
and then the carrot was you
get this trip toto Vegas.
- Rick was freaked out
about it,
but I wasn't.
Remember, I'm the guy
that's just, you know,
"You know this is gonna work,"
'cause I know it is, right?
It's all a shamrock, baby.
Shamrock.
- I was the direct contact
with the winners,
so I could legitimize
all of the information.
It was all recorded and,
you know,
it was 17 years ago,
so it was a big tape recorder
that I carried around
in a black McDonald's
briefcase.
I even carried it
to my friend's wedding
in Jackson Hole because,
you know,
I had to be able to tape
the calls whenever they came.
It's like
I had to flip the tapes
I'd be like,
"Can I put you on hold
for a second?"
You know, and then
I'd flip the tapes
and then put them back on.
- Amy would call them up
and say, "Hey, look,
"we're putting together
this media release
"of previous winners,
how they won it,
"what they did with it,
"some of their story that
"it hasn't been really told.
You know, we'll come to you
or you can come to us."
Wherever we were gonna do it,
whatever hotel that you want.
Nobody said no to that.
Most everybody was like,
"Tell me when we're going
to Vegas."
- Obviously we were not
gonna do a reunion,
um, but to the winners,
we told them, uh,
"We're planning this
big reunion,"
and we started
to get them actually
excited to be
going to Las Vegas.
- That was kind of fundamental
that was a bit of a ruse.
We, you knowwe didn't make
reservations in Las Vegas.
I think the pitch was,
you know,
"We're gonna put your story
up on the big screen
"and, you know,
over a dinner,
"and everybody's gonna clap.
Are you interested
in the reunion of winners?"
And of course they are.
Well, locking them into
a story on camera
takes a B minus case
and makes it, you know,
an A, A plus case.
- My name is Doug Astralaga,
I'm an FBI agent,
and I was the lighting guy
for the Shamrock production
in the McDonald's case.
Oh, so this is the little
yeah, I remember this.
- Doug Astralaga was
a relatively young agent.
Uh, you know,
realreal enthusiastic,
uh, charismatic guy.
- When I came out of Quantico,
I wanted to do
something exciting.
- Originally I had stuck him
with the admin agent
on this title III,
which is, uh,
of all the jobs,
probably the most thankless.
I mean, itit really is a
a brutal job,
but there's a reward process
that happens,
so in Doug's case,
we let him
work on the undercover
withwith Doug Mathews
as the
the "lighting guy."
- I had no idea
what I was doing.
I was just using
this light meter
and pressing something
on this going,
"It's great."
This isI still have no idea
how to use one of these.
Excellent, but I do believe
we need more lighting
over here.
Really, the point was
to engage them
in conversations.
That had to reconcile with what
they had originally stated
for McDonald's
to win the prize.
- We recorded these
interviews with them
so the FBI could then
match the timeline
match the facts.
What they originally
told McDonald's,
what they're telling us
on camera,
what the FBI
sort of already knew.
- So that once we had
the evidence showing that
you know you didn't
win this legitimately,
you've lied to the FBI,
and here's the evidence
to prove it,
they would be more willing
to cooperate.
- Yes.
- The FBI was merelywhen
when the FBI took a film crew
to a winner,
that winner had already
contacted Simon Marketing,
hence McDonald's,
claiming to have been a winner.
They're already saying,
"I did this,
and this is how I obtained
this game piece."
An individual could never claim
that's entrapment
because they did it before
the law enforcement
was involved.
Entrapment is to have
law enforcement
put the idea into
the person's head
and to get them to do something
they otherwise
wouldn't have done.
We weren't saying,
"Say this, say this,
and say that."
We were saying,
"How?
What?
Where?
Who?"
Those are just opportunities
for him to fill in the blanks
and tell us
what he wants to tell us.
- Remember just keep
looking at me.
- Okay.
- And if you mess up
or you feel like
you wanna say it again,
we can start all over again.
- Okay.
And I'll try to limit
my hand gestures.
Sometimes it gets in there so
I'll make sure I don't do that.
Um, okay, why don't we go back
to that day that you won
in New Hampshire
and can you just sort of
describe the day for us?
What you were doing in the
morning and at work and then
- It was a, uha summer day.
Uh, no, wait, uh,
I wasn't working.
It was Sunday,
as a matter of fact.
Uh...
And there wasn't a whole lot
of work to do,
so, uh, you know,
just browsing through
the Sunday paper
as I am want to do.
- He was fumbling through it
trying to figure out
how he won that
particular piece.
In reality,
a life experience like that
is drilled into your
memory forever and ever.
Nobody wins $1 million
on a regular basis.
- Uh, I found the insert
and I found the, uh,
little tear-off tab
and I got cold,
very cold.
- He was sweating so bad.
Like, I know at some point, um,
Amy even said to me,
"Every time you ask him
a question,
it's like I gotta get
the towel to dot his head."
It was pouring out...
- Uh
- Because he was lying
about everything.
- Well, suffice it to say,
I justI just got cold
all over.
- No, I, uh, first I wasn't
I wasn't so sure about it.
I went to a lawyer.
- I did.
I wantyou know,
you need to protect yourself
and, uh
- No, I don't.
Uh
- No, it was, um
oh...
Over in, uh
oh...
- You could zoom in,
'cause we did,
zoom in on his forehead
and you could just see
the sweat.
- Yes.
- Okay.
- Yeah, um
- I'm leaky.
- You know,
and I'd say stuff like,
"Hey, so nobody, like,
called you up and said,
"'Hey, we need you to be
a winner,' or whatever?"
And he'd go, "God, no!
I'd never do that!"
And it justjust pours.
The sweat would pour.
I went to a lawyer,
uh, and he advised me to pr
at all cost,
protect my identity.
- It just seemed odd to me that
many of the people I talked to
did not want to come forward
and they seemed
to have knowledge
about what their
legal rights were
about, uh,
being anonymous or not.
- Buddy Fisher was the father
of Robin Colombo,
uh, who was married
to Jerry Colombo.
- I'll never forget it.
I was upstairs
in my bedroom,
and my father called me
and there wasn't
many words exchanged.
He just said,
"I want the big one,"
so I knew what it meant.
- He did get one
of the $1 million tickets
and he had never broken a law
in his entire life.
One stipulation
that my grandfather made,
um, he says, "Okay, If I
if I get this ticket,
I do notI'mI'm not doing
a commercial."
But I remember we would be
getting phone calls,
and they would talk
to my grandfather
and say, "Hey, we're trying
to get all of the, um
the Monopoly winners together
for some kind of reunion,"
or something like that.
I wanna say it was Vegas,
so he did make that trip.
- Now, had your wife or anyone
in your whole family
ever won anything
like that before?
- No, no.
- Never?
- Nothing.
- So this was big.
- Ithuge.
- 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, yes,
and we still do.
- Oh, good.
- And we still do, yes.
- Have any of them won
any cars or
- No.
- I think I won a cheeseburger.
- You she did do one?
I did not know that.
Oh.
Okay, yeah.
I diI did not know that.
Hmm.
Okay.
Wow.
Is that around?
- You know,
the greed was crazy here,
which is great for us.
- One night Jerry and I
were out with our wives
to dinner
and we went
to the men's room together.
That sounds horrible but we
went to the men's room together
and Jerry gave me
a $1 million ticket.
- This is for you.
And I told him,
"I don't wanna be involved.
I really don't."
II had not cashed in anything
but a $25,000 ticket.
I told him I didn't need
the $1 million.
I told him I was out of it.
I said, "Jerry, you know what?
"I don't know what you did
with these guys,
"how much you made,
or anything else.
"There's a time
and there's a place.
Stop," and everything else.
He said, "Well, just do
something with the ticket."
So I took the ticket and I
flushed it down the toilet.
- Didn'tnothing.
Zero.
- I didn't, either.
How's that?
Yeah, how's that?
I didn't either.
No.
I knew I was doing
the right thing.
And Jerry had told me
it was over and that was it.
I'm telling you,
the night I flushed that ticket
down the toilet,
I thought it was over.
I thought it was over.
I swear to you
on everything holy,
I thought it was over.
- If I even suspected
he was taking tickets,
I would have told on him
in a heartbeat,
and he knew it.
And I think that's why
I didn't know it.
II bet that's why
I didn't get a ticket.
After Jerry got sick with this
Guillain-Barré syndrome,
there was something different
in him.
Even though he was
well on the road to mending,
he could have repercussions
later on
being crippled or bedridden
or dead.
So he had nothing to lose
at that point.
- My husband, Jerry,
we got a lot of
my family members involved,
and that isn't all.
My family members that won,
that was just a little piece
of the pie.
You had Al Capone
with the prohibition.
You had Mike Franzese
with the gas,
and then now you have this
the Monopoly.
That's really the highest
three moneymakers
of the mob so far.
My husband picked the winners.
He had tickets.
He flew everywhere.
I think Uncle Jerry may have
even got a little jealous.
- "Uncle Jerry"
is Jerome Jacobson.
And Jerry is my husband,
Jerry Colombo.
Jacobson became Uncle Jerry
because that's
an Italian thing.
My husband gave him that
out of respect.
- If your general opinion
of mankind
is running kind of low
this holiday season,
here's a story that might
make you feel much,
much better about
the human race.
- St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital
in Memphis has received
a very unusual gift.
- Yeah, that'sthat's
Uncle Jerry.
- Hospital officials
are calling this
a gift from an angel
in the true spirit
of the season.
- This is a happy day.
Whoo-hoo!
- If you're out there
and you hear me,
we love you.
My brother took this little,
small operation
and made it huge.
Literally, it was a monopoly
of scams.
The winners,
they would just lie, lie, lie.
We can push, and you never know
when you're gonna hit a wall.
There was things
that nobody knew.
And I just kept it all
to myself.
I thought, "I'm never
gonna get out of this."
I was about to panic.
I had no other option but to
take this process through.
The money got too big.