I'm just gonna tell you the whole story.
So I had the $50,000 debt because of the taxes.
I was screwed. Jerry's dead, I'm left holding the bag.
And I don't have 50,000 for the IRS. I'm not going down like that.
I was just thinking, "Okay, I gotta do something here. I gotta do something."
I called the IRS and I said, "Listen,
I know you know I owe 50,000, but I have a story for you."
So I told the IRS the whole story verbatim.
Now it might have been a year later, my accountant, we were talking,
and he said, "You're the reason why all this went down." I said, "What?"
He said, "Yeah." Because they reported it to the FBI or whomever,
and it just busted wide open after that. But I had no idea,
all I was trying to do is get myself out a $50,000 debt.
And the next thing I knew, everybody is being investigated.
I was kind of scared coming out with this.
I didn't want anything to happen to me
because I've come a long way, I don't wanna ever go back.
And so I was hesitant about this whole mess,
because when you're quiet for so long about things that took a turn
and you didn't know why it took a turn,
then you found out that you're the reason that it made the turn,
I don't know what, it just made me be more quiet.
But does that make you the informant?
It does, but I don't like that adjective. I don't like that because
in my mind, I never even knew that I was the one.
MCMILLIONS
He was not at his Lawrenceville home today,
the man neighbors here have jokingly nicknamed...
We called him the Hamburglar.
The FBI says 58-year-old Jerome Jacobson was the ringleader who kept...
There was a lot of publicity on this case at the time.
There was an enormous amount of publicity.
The press was all around the house, on the streets.
I get phone calls continuously, all hours of the night, they would call.
Jacobson provided the winning game pieces to his friends and associates
who acted as recruiters.
We were totally exhausted.
It just took so much energy to get out in the public.
The FBI believes those recruiters passed on the tickets to relatives.
So we had this big buildup of the case in anticipation of the trial.
Eight people who worked for the company that runs McDonald's games
like Monopoly and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire...
... the hugely popular Monopoly game...
... people who run the McDonald's Monopoly game.
If you're just tuning in, breaking news here on 1010 WINS.
A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
This happening just a matter of minutes ago.
U.S. attacked
After 9/11 everything changed. So this McDonald's story just vanished.
It did very quickly get eclipsed. "All right, we're under attack,"
and you kind of snap out of it.
The world changed. And what went
from being a case that the entire office and others
were feverishly working on kind of went back to primarily just Doug and Rick.
Many, many of us were immediately changed.
You are now a terrorism agent and working all day, all night on that.
We didn't put any local stories on the front page for four months.
So if we had updates, they were going back of the paper.
So it vanished here and then vanished off the front pages everywhere.
After 9/11 the McDonald's was a memory.
Everybody forgot about it,
except the FBI and the Justice Department. They proceeded.
The trial was here in Jacksonville, here in this building.
It lasted three weeks,
and it was almost like a couple trials within a trial because
once we have the overall scheme,
then had to place evidence just upon each of the defendants.
You have those grand hopes of being a million-dollar winner.
Devereaux says Jacobson pocketed those pieces,
and in exchange for a cut of the prize, gave them to friends and relatives.
Mark is at that stage coming on very strong,
with lots of threats about the consequence to our client,
and the terrible situation our client was in,
and how much time it was gonna get.
Generally, we don't respond favorably to threats.
It was pretty clear that Mark Devereaux was coming full force.
I always love wiretaps because you just bring in the little recorder
and you push play.
And there's this client, not only is he making a confession
you are listening live to your client committing the crime.
Mark was like the bulldog that bit the tire of the truck
and couldn't let go,
and ultimately I sent Janice on him. And she eventually brought him around.
Ultimately, it's all up to how you will define victory.
And in this case, it wasn't trial, but it was
working through what was best for him plea-wise.
We ended up working out something that was definitely waivable
and favorable for our client from a very difficult position to start with.
Right. We didn't have much of a defense.
According to federal investigators, Jacobson has pleaded guilty
to taking those pieces and giving them to friends and family to redeem.
Once we made our deal and Jerry pled guilty
then he became kind of the instrument of the prosecution.
Because Jerry began cooperating,
the prosecutor did agree to do have motion to the court for reduction
based on substantial assistance.
But you are totally at their discretion.
They could suck you dry for information and then not help you.
We had eight original individuals who are indicted,
which turned into fifty-three people.
And out of the fifty-three that were there,
everybody pled but seven people decided to go to trial.
They didn't plead because they didn't like Devereaux's aftershave.
It's because we had them. That's why.
They got me on one count of mail fraud, and I pled to the one count
because... I did it. I did it.
These people that I gave tickets to did not know I lied to them.
So they really... they got screwed.
But once you plead guilty, it's too late.
But that's the mentality of people who never been in trouble.
You get so scared, it's like you're gonna lose everything you have,
you're gonna go to jail and somebody's gonna be screwing your wife,
and your kids, they're not gonna know you anymore, and guys get scared.
So that's why they plead guilty, to get it over with.
My plan at the time was to enter a plea of not guilty. So that's what I did.
If you have little knowledge of a conspiracy or a crime,
you can't be guilty.
Seven went to trial, two following my opening statement
ended up changing their pleas from not guilty to guilty
because they didn't realize the evidence was more than compelling.
The light at the end of the tunnel was a train coming at them,
and they wanted to get out of the way, so they pled guilty.
Certainly, it was a crime when Jacobson stole that game piece.
But then you had the fraudster,
and the fraudster is the one turning in that game piece
and saying that he or she won it according to these rules.
Part of the government's theory was that McDonald's have been defrauded
by folks like George Chandler because they had violated the game rules.
Game rules in a federal court of law, the federal statutes apply, mail fraud.
I have never tried a case where the law
is the game rules of a hamburger company.
You literally have a federal prosecutor suggesting that
if you broke the McDonald's game rules, you must be a criminal.
There were those that would really question,
"Why are you even prosecuting it? It was just a game."
There's a difference between a law and rules of a game.
But even if an individual was tricked, and their friend was telling them,
"Why don't you do this? You act like you're the winner."
Well, you committed fraud because you deceived,
you tricked Ronald McDonald into letting go of money.
What gave the federal government the ability to prosecute this
was that they used the United States mail.
If you have a scheme to trick somebody
out of property or money,
and you use our United States mail,
that's a crime.
The government dug its heels in on that and took the position that
if someone found that game piece on the street and cashed it in,
they'd be committing a federal crime.
But the McDonald's witnesses called by the government
admitted that there's nothing that prohibits a transfer of a ticket.
So St. Jude could get a ticket given to them as a gift,
George Chandler can get the ticket by buying it or having it handed to him.
All of that was perfectly lawful.
Now, of course, the defense made a big deal of St. Jude saying, "See?
McDonald's didn't even follow the rules, didn't follow their own rules."
They did follow the rules.
McDonald's gave St. Jude's Hospital a million-dollar donation
as a gesture of goodwill and fairness.
I don't think the average person
would think if they got a game piece from somebody else,
but most in these circumstance that they were doing anything wrong,
even though they would tell him a lie, it wasn't a crime.
They didn't know though that the piece was stolen.
It's like the difference of buying a car that's stolen
versus, "Oh, look, I got a really good deal," and had they known,
I would suspect many of them, if not, all of them, wouldn't have bought it.
I was a witness for the US government for Mark Devereaux.
I remember a question that Devereaux asked me,
he said, "When did you find out the game pieces were stolen?"
I said, "You told me they weren't stolen."
If he could have come up and punched me at that time, he probably would have.
But he stepped right into it, because it was the truth.
Jerry had never told anyone.
No one in the whole process knew that he was stealing the game pieces.
People said, "Well, how? You got to be kidding me." No.
I knew Jerry has done something wrong. He said, "I want the game pieces."
But the reality is,
He had right to place them wherever he wanted. He was taking money for them.
There's only one witness that could say what George Chandler knew
and that was his foster brother, Mr. Dwight Baker.
And he told the jury in substance that,
"I heard George Chandler and Dwight Baker made it clear to the jury
that George was not a member of the conspiracy." He said that,
sworn testimony. The FBI did a wiretap for two months.
Hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and not one word about George Chandler
had in any complicity and knowledge of tickets being stolen or embezzled.
The judge agreed with us,
and he announced that he was gonna add a jury instruction that
the juries could not convict unless Chandler knew the ticket was stolen
or unlawfully obtained.
We knew then we should win the case.
Today, the Lawrenceville man who admitted fixing the McDonald's Monopoly
a few years ago testifies in federal court.
Jerome Jacobson took the winning tickets
while working as head of security for the company that ran the game.
The obvious question
and one of the things that was important for us to present to the jury
was how in the world could he, Jerome Jacobson,
steal winning pieces from the fortress that was Simon Marketing and Dittler
while he was being accompanied by a lady from an accounting firm?
How did he do it?
When I put a witness on the stand, especially like Mr. Jacobson,
I tried to do the defenses job before I let the defense do it telling them,
"Mr. Jacobson, you're a thief." And make him admit that.
I don't want the jury to think I'm some friend to his
because I'm not a friend of Mr. Jacobson.
Just tell the truth, what'd you do?
The way this would work is that the airports were big hub for him.
It's how he got around.
And he would utilize the frequent flyer lounges,
the crown rooms. He would frequent those a lot.
Hilda Bennett was accompanying Jerry Jacobson,
but she is not walking in to the men's bathroom facility with him.
Hilda was supposed to be with him at all times.
She was never ever under any circumstances
to give the briefcase full of winning tickets to Jerry and Jerry alone.
The briefcase had combinations on it.
Jerry had his combination.
Hilda had hers.
And somehow he found out her combination.
He had to look over his shoulder, like he did at the vault
and get the combination.
He said he went into a stall where he had privacy
and he just opened up the briefcase.
The game pieces were in an envelope that was sealed with a sticker
that if you remove the sticker, it would show that it was removed.
This is before 9/11. He'd take a little pen knife,
open it up, take those game pieces.
He knows one of them is a winning million-dollar game piece.
He brought commons with him
so that they would have the right amount of pieces on it
because on the outside of the envelope, it would say 37 pieces.
So he couldn't take the winners out, it wouldn't be 37 anymore
so he had to bring some to replace it.
For some reason, no idea why
he got sent the stickers that went on the envelopes.
He got a sheet of them sent to him by mistake.
You know, he showed me the envelope, had that little seal hologram on it.
He said, "Nobody can get them from me because this is sealed
and it's got special mark on it if anybody tries to get into it."
So he would close the envelope and put on a new sticker and nobody knew.
But had he not gotten the stickers, he never could have done this.
Nobody suspected that and that's how he did it.
After he stole all the game pieces
he would end up going to these factories and making a big plague.
"Ladies and gentleman, please see,
here is the seed pack which contains one of the winning game pieces.
Please everyone, look at it to ensure that it has not been tampered with.
Look, I take my job so serious, I even wear a bulletproof vest."
And everybody is thinking, "Wow, this guy is going rarely overboard."
But it was all a show.
The biggest break in the chain to me was the security auditor, Hilda.
But I can't totally blame her
because I've seen a lot of people not stand up to Jerry
that lame take a little pass rather than go in for a confrontation.
Our first thought was the two of them had to be in cahoots.
How else could it work? I wanna get two really good interviewers down here
because I wanna know once and for all, is she involved, is she not involved.
So we interviewed Hilda Bennett and the other people from the CPA firm.
They weren't involved. We had no money, trading hands,
nothing to show that they were a part of this game.
How could you not be involved? But she turned out to be an honest lady
and just got had by Jerry like he did everybody else.
I think he told me at some point, he goes,
"Yeah, these CPA firms that we're hiring to follow me
legitimize this process, a bunch of idiots."
As he coined this, "I'm stupid, but I was smarter than those guys."
We're near the end of merely six hours of closing arguments
in which defense attorneys have tried to convince the jury
that their clients are victims, too.
They said they will play just like everyone else in this scam.
George Chandler's lawyer insists his client thought
he was helping his foster father hide assets during a sticky divorce.
This case goes to the jury next,
and what they have to decide is whether they have any reasonable doubt
any of these guys intended to be part of a scam.
Until trial, Jerry had never told anyone he had went into the bathroom
and changed out the game pieces and was stealing them. He never told anybody.
In order for it to be a crime, you have to acknowledge that it's stolen.
No one knew.
When the jury gave their verdict to the judge,
there was kind of a respectful but pregnant silence.
And then the judge said, "Guilty."
It confirmed my worst fear.
And that was hard. It was difficult.
When you put 12 people together in that box, it's something magical.
And I'm not saying anybody is a lie detector,
but most of us can after a while go... that just doesn't pass the smell test.
We're very pleased with the verdict.
I think that shows that there's no easy way to make money but to work hard.
And I think it shows that fraud is not a game and fraud is just thievery.
Thanks a lot.
George never wavered nor did I in our belief in his innocence
and we went right to work to put together
a comprehensive motion for judgment of acquittal.
We knew we would fail,
but that doesn't change the fact that you've been found guilty.
I remember coming home and talking to Russell about the verdict.
I remember Russell asking me
if I was gonna have to go to jail.
And I didn't know how to answer him.
I didn't think he was serious. I was like, "You're not serious."
All you think about at 10 years old is going behind bars.
You see all these bars on TV and that's jail to you.
I was definitely afraid for him. Am I gonna get to see my dad anymore?
Am I gonna get to see him for the next 10 years? Is he going away for life?
It's heart-wrenching for sure because you wanna say,
"Daddy, when am I gonna see you? What do you have to do?" You don't know.
And he loved up to me and I took him under my arm,
told him it's gonna be all right. We'll make it through.
And...
I told him not to worry.
That...
That the truth will eventually win the battle.
Robin Colombo took part in a nationwide scheme to steal the game winnings.
Maximum penalty of a single count of mail fraud is five years in prison
and a $250,000 fine along with restitution.
- And what did you get sentenced to? - Eighteen months.
Because of my past records they were throwing out all kind of numbers,
10 years, and when we went for sentencing, the judge said,
"That was so long ago. We'll forget about that."
He gave me the year and a day.
The judge gave me six months of ankle brace and then 12-months' probation.
I wore an ankle bracelet, yes, sir, for two years.
Two years house arrest and probation.
When I was in the courtroom that day, I was thinking to myself,
"I'm gonna be going to jail and I got to make plans for my son
to figure out who gonna be the best person for him to stay with."
He said, "We're not gonna lock you up."
And I said, "Well, that's a good thing."
My full sentencing was I had to pay restitution.
My house still has a lean on it
but it was a sigh relief that I'll be able to be home with my child.
White-collar crimes notoriously do not get high sentences.
If they haven't committed another crime, they have no priors,
and they cooperate, they may only get two years imprisonment.
Jerry Jacobson got the most severe sentence to approximately three years.
He pled guilty, received a 37-month sentence, I think.
And I would consider that a victory.
He should have got more.
It's just done square up to me, but again, like I said, I'm just an agent.
Most agents probably believe that. So we're glad we don't wear the robe.
Thirty-seven months in prison,
particularly with somebody who has MS is not exactly an easy sentence either.
A night is a long time in prison.
The sympathetic heart of a criminal defense lawyer.
As part of Jerry's sentence he was ordered to pay I think
somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 million in restitution
and I believe forfeiture as well.
It was more than he could pay.
And so at a certain point, it becomes irrelevant.
So when I went to jail and meet with the unit manager, and he says,
"You owe three and a half million dollars."
I said, "Yeah." He said, "Do you have it?"
I said, "Yeah. It's in my locker. I brought it in with me.
Maybe if you come and help me, we could carry it in here."
To this day, I pay a hundred and sixty dollars a month.
If you had to do it again would you do it again?
Tomorrow.
These heels!
I've had a crazy journey really after Jerry, my husband, died.
I was a shell of a woman. It was horrible.
I couldn't eat. I couldn't do nothing.
So, I didn't wanna be here no more.
So, I...
took a lot of pills.
I told Jerry, "I'll see you soon."
That should have killed me. That didn't.
Long story short, I got in the nut hut. I'm here.
Jerry had a lot of faults. I know he cheated on me. I know he lied.
But he was also my mediator, my middleman that kept me from
the family, from people, hurting me.
He always took my side.
I can't find my... Where's my lighter?
The Colombos, I know they blame me. How could you not? I'm the driver.
I would.
You blame everybody. You blame God. You, blame...
It felt...
When my mother went to prison, after Jerry died,
it ended up becoming
a big war between my family and the Colombos.
They ended up keeping my brother, who's three years old at the time.
Hi, camera. Hi, camera.
I would call them all the time, trying to get him.
They would never let me see him.
I was in prison, counting the days until I'm gonna see my damn son.
And Monopoly put me back in prison.
I lost my son, my husband, losing my freedom again.
I don't know what else I'm gonna do.
He never once apologized ever for doing it, first of all.
I don't think he's regretting anything he did.
He pulled off a twenty-million dollar McDonald's scam.
He's famous almost, you know. You're doing a movie about him.
Talking about the consequence, I remember his remorsefulness and grief
when he realized that other people were being charged.
He didn't imagine that could happen.
We did not realize what it was going to do at the time that Jerry was caught.
So our paper were all vilified, we did nothing wrong.
- We're doing our job. - We're doing what we're supposed to.
After they announced to close the plant to everybody, we had no choice.
You didn't get a severance or anything, you were just terminated basically.
You would be amazed if the reaction and the emotion you saw
in a lot of the people, some of them just about crying.
So, we all lost our jobs because this place disappeared.
There is no Dittler Brothers.
And it just all came crashing to an end because of one person.
It hurt a lot of people.
I would hope he feels bad, just because we built friendships.
I remember the joke around. They wished he would come back up here,
and sent in the lobby, and just wait everybody as they walk by, slap him.
I think he would need protection if he came back up to the plant.
Because what he done over 10 years...
He has never once mentioned
all the chaos and destruction that he caused with his little project.
And he didn't even seem to think about it.
He has a variety of thoughts about why he did it.
But, basically, he said it was utter stupidity on his part.
Jerry and I were married from 1973 until '76.
Let's put it this way. It went from worse to unbearable.
When the child was brought up a certain way, they wind up a certain way.
He never felt worthy of much. He was raised without money,
and he felt like he'd played second fiddle to Marvin
because Marvin was getting the financial support.
We were friends, but
we're not brothers, if that's a word you wanna say.
No. There were no fun stories. There are no fun stories. No.
And sometimes in his life, he decided
"I want what all these other people have."
He wanted people to look up at him for his prestige,
the money that he had in the bank,
so it could suppress all the negative feelings.
And he achieved what he wanted to. He had money. He had status.
He had everything.
But then paid dearly for it.
He may be remorseful, but he also may think, "Well, I did have it once."
Scarlet! McKinley!
Russell! Taylor! Pruitt!
What?
Wake up.
- You can't wear that. - Why?
It's church, Pruitt. It's church, the Lord's house. Come on.
I knew the odds of winning the appeal were very, very slim.
I was just sentenced to probation. So I remember thinking,
"What's the point?"
But I wanted to appeal because I needed justice to be served.
Okay. We're ready? Let's roll. Load up.
We wanna head this direction.
When I was convicted, Mark Devereaux knew the evidence was overwhelming,
that I was not involved in a conspiracy.
Mr. Chandler certainly didn't have clean hands.
He was willing to take money from
a lady that should possibly get
50% of whatever the money is through a divorce.
He was lying to McDonald's, willing to do that, too.
There was no wife, that was a phantom story, because the appeal that we wrote
disagreed, and said that type of approach is standing criminal law.
But the percentage of criminal convictions to get reversed
by the 11th Circuit is down around two percent.
So we felt we were right. But being right doesn't always mean that you win.
The court of appeals agreed with us. We won the appeal in 2004.
The world was now making sense again.
Yeah, I was eventually acquitted.
The problem was I still lost a lot of people's trust.
And that hurts. And there's real damage there,
real and lasting, and permanent damage.
For a long time, I was angry with Dwight. And I felt violated.
Dwight was my friend. I trusted him, and I looked up to him.
- Hey, George. - Hey, Dwight. How are you?
- How's the family? - Doing all good.
I told Dwight, "I forgive you.
I'm not angry with you anymore."
I would never want anybody to go through the pain and hell
with the people that have been involved because of my behavior
have had to go through.
You pay for some bad choices. And the sad part is
everybody around you pays for your bad choices.
We all make mistakes.
He shouldn't be faulted for the rest of his life.
It's hard to move on sometimes.
You can never quite get back to normal,
but you can forgive, and you can extend grace to people.
I just wanted to do better in life,
and didn't think of all the repercussions that was involved.
I did a crooked deed, and I've been knocked down.
Just get up and keep moving. And that's what I did.
Probation officer told me before, as far as Robin was concerned,
no contact at all.
Told her that I'm not gonna
associate myself with her, and I don't need no more trouble.
Just recently...
I saw her for the first time since all of this happened.
- Hi. Hey, hey. My friend. - What's up, girl?
First thing I'm gonna get you is a wireless doorbell.
Night and day, I don't know if we would be friends for some reason.
And she's a good person. She really is.
- You want a cup of coffee? - Half a cup.
Once we all got indicted, I was the asshole.
I was an outcast because I got them involved.
You start all over.
I started over umpteen times.
He never got any money. Nothing. And then, he lost his career.
I lost him as a friend.
It's one of the regrets that I have. I made a lot of regrets in my life,
but Michael was one of my big regrets.
I was put at risk.
I was put at risk of maybe never seeing grandkids, kids, wife, going to jail.
I'm not a dumb person, but I did a dumb thing.
And when I thought it was over, it was over. I never...
And that hurt. That hurt.
We haven't spoken since.
- You cut off communication with Jerry? - We have not spoken since.
Did I do stupid things? Yeah. Do I regret it? Of course.
The only thing is though, I met you,
that was a real benefit out of the whole thing, of the whole thing.
I did it. I could've got a real dick as a prosecutor.
I end up making a personal friend. So there's always a benefit in life.
I think one of the funniest was when you invited my wife and I
to your 60th birthday.
And then when you said, "Well, this is the guy that prosecuted me."
Everybody's like, they didn't know what to say.
You learn to live with everything.
I've learned to live with cancer, so.
Your life changes. Your priorities change.
I was excommunicated from the church. And still am.
I hope to change that someday.
Because I have a lot to still contribute. Yeah.
They always say you gotta fall before you can rise.
And I seen my dad grow so much stronger over time because of
the adversity he had faced.
I know McDonald's was victimized. But they didn't lose anything here.
Who you gonna say, their sales dipped? That's a loser.
But it's all the people that participated in this contest,
and thought that it was legitimate.
And then, the byproduct victims, Simon Marketing was one.
Ditler Brothers. Some of these people, they lost their job in a day.
I'm gonna go onto the next case.
But the people that depend on that job, they're gone.
All because of
one man's greed, Jerry Jacobson. He's by himself on that.
If somebody said to me that what he did was a victimless crime,
I would tell them they've lost their mind. How can you say that?
You wrecked so many people's lives.
If he said that,
honestly, it would just be...
It would just be an excuse.
Yeah, he definitely wants to put it in his past.
And when's the last time you guys spoke?
Probably about a month ago.
Now he doesn't wanna think about it, don't wanna talk about it. Nothing.
So when I tease him, I said, "You got any tickets?"
He didn't even respond.
He violated the law, he went to jail, he's got 12 million in restitution.
He's testified. He's been on the news. This case keeps now 18 years later,
getting attention, and all they wanna do is live their life.
He wants to live his remaining life in peace,
without having to answer for this to everybody around him again.
I think he got off pretty easily.
You talked about he got a slap on the wrist.
Because he still has his life. He still has his nice house. He still has cars.
Plus, they find the money that he's kept buried probably someplace.
- Do you think so? - Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Contingency plan. Come on. It's him.
I would have money buried someplace. Come on.
The truth of the matter is the vast majority of these winners,
they're good people. They just said something stupid,
and there's not anybody that doesn't do something stupid.
Many didn't recognize the severity of it.
And probably had no idea that they were committing a federal crime.
"It's so easy, this is all you have to do. You're not hurting anybody."
They just wanted some free easy money.
To do something that we all know is wrong.
The McDonald's case was what we call a career case.
Not all agents get a career case.
You're doing something that it seems like they will make a movie about it.
I'm really happy that everything ended how it did.
That we were able to put the game back.
It's still today at McDonald's in a very fun game.
Much more secure, and we just wanna make sure that justice was served.
And I do feel that it was.
John Ashcroft, who was the attorney-general,
thanked me for the service to the country.
And that was a really proud moment.
I have no letters from Doug.
When you look back now, which I don't really do much...
For whatever reasons, you're just like,
"This minefield of shit that we went around. And somehow, we were golden."
I could've looked at that sticky note and said, "Whatever. What is that?"
But without the informant on this case, never would've happened.
It started right there.
So, you said that you had called the IRS.
But at no point did you ever call the FBI directly, did you?
No. And why would I call the FBI?
I have no idea that that was even gonna be a factor.
I never heard from anyone again. IRS, detectives, FBI, McDonald's,
Jerry, nobody. It was like, I never even was involved.
Can you imagine the IRS giving something to the FBI
that turns out to be a case, that we didn't already know about?
Holy shit, I hope we're better than that.
My understanding was, it was a complaint duty call.
Some disgruntled nonparticipant, but bystander,
sat and burned the whole house down, and called the FBI.
I'll tell you this, this is how you know.
If the IRS had even, even tidily,
just a minute scratched the surface of this case,
would've been a joint takedown, they would've been right there beside us,
so go back and look. It's Ashcroft, and there's no IRS there.
So I'll promise you that did not happen that way.
Can you tell us who the informant is?
Yeah, no, not in a million years.
So good try. No sale.
I don't think anybody thought that it was gonna get as big as it did.
And it got really big, and it got really big really fast.
But I told them if it ever goes south, I don't wanna be caught up in this.
Had I taken that McDonald's ticket and cashed it in,
I honestly, in my heart, believe she still would have called the FBI,
and I would be in prison right now.
- Hello. - Hello, Francesco.
- The informant was, who? - The informant was Frank's mother.
After Jerry passed, and I seen all the nonsense going on,
and all the manipulation, and people backstabbing each other.
There was a lot of things back then that happened.
At that point, Frank's mother had custody of Francesco.
But it became more and more evident that when Robin got out of prison,
Robin was going to have her son.
And that didn't go over well with Frank's mother.
So because her son was dead, and because she blamed whoever,
for whatever occurred to her son, she then turned into the vengeful mode.
I'm going to now take the one thing that Robin has away from her.
And that's her son.
So she called the FBI.
She's the one that decided to break it.
Her son's dead, there was no link back, she called the FBI.
And rat everybody out. That was the way it had to be.
Laugh. Laugh.
I went from living with my mom and I've lived with my mom's parents.
I've lived with my dad's parents.
That's the biggest struggle of my life, being torn between the two families.
I felt like a pawn because a lot of it was pointing fingers at that point.
It was a battle of them back and forth, and I was caught in the middle of it.
Hey. Birthday girl!
At this point in life,
I wanna avoid conflict. I had so much of it in my childhood.
I don't wanna hear any negativity from anybody anymore.
My mom and my grandma,
surprisingly now, they have a pretty good relationship.
In the long run, I ended up being their favorite daughter-in-law...
I don't know if it's because I stood up to them.
- A big change from all those years. - Yeah.
She tells me everything, and she wants me to be the one, if papa goes first,
to be the one she takes care of her. And I would be.
No matter what, I would be there for them. They know that.
That's who I am.
She only gave them information on Robin,
Robin's father, and Gloria.
If she could get rid of Robin, maybe not death, but disappear,
then there was no one to take care of Francesco.
But then there still remained Robin's parents, whom could have raised.
So, they all had to go, to be able to have Francesco.
And she was gaining her grandson. That was the reward.
The reward was her grandson.
My mother didn't realize that the FBI was gonna go after Jerome
and wiretap his house, and so forth and so on.
And then make another Monopoly game, and started connecting the dots.
Then, the Texas and then Rhode Island,
then he did all these other tickets for a couple of years.
So, this story has got revenge, it's got everything all wrapped up into one.
Now you guys are the only people outside of us that knew that one.
- We have not told anyone. - Anyone. No one on this planet.
We just figured it was time to tell the truth.
- That's my youngest. - That's Vinny.
Hey, bud.
My son just came home from work.
This is Vintonio. And he just happens to work for McDonald's now.
Holy shit.
So McDonald's has treated the family very well.
Jerry Jacobson was released from prison in 2006.
He currently lives with his 7th wife, Linda, near Atlanta, Georgia.
He stole more than $24 million in cash and prizes over a 12-year period.
He still pays $370 per month in restitution.
In response to the scandal,
McDonald's gave away $25 million in prizes to randomly selected customers.