Just as casinos and lotteries attract crime, McDonald’s Monopoly led to attempted fraud and theft of the high-value game pieces. The contest started in 1987 as the brainchild of Simon Marketing, the company behind the Happy Meal, and was a massive success, boosting McDonald’s sales by 40 percent. The object was to collect various Monopoly properties that could be redeemed for cash prizes, with some instant-win pieces ranging from free food to cars, vacations, and millions of dollars. If you’ve never played, the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion involves collecting tiny peel-off game pieces that were found on the packaging of the chain’s menu items and in print ads. Though it’s not a $1 million prize or a Dodge Viper, this primer will surely help you enjoy such a riveting, hilarious documentary. To help, we’ve compiled this guide of information and reference points from the docuseries, the Daily Beast’s excellent feature on the theft, and contemporaneous news reports on the legal fallout. If there’s a downside to McMillions, it’s that viewers might need a conspiracy wall - complete with a corkboard, red string, and index cards - to keep up with who’s who, what’s what, and how it all relates to the scheme and the investigation. Blending elements of the Ocean’s films, Argo, and Donnie Brasco, the six-part saga, directed by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, involves a complicated scam, inept Florida men, Italian mobsters, very real housewives, Mormons, drug dealers, strip clubs, wiretaps, and a zany sting operation run by a hyperactive G-man. That’s FBI Special Agent Doug Mathews’s assessment of the $24 million fraud scheme that’s the focus of HBO’s new documentary McMillions. “From 1989 to 2001, there were almost no legitimate winners of the high-value game pieces in the McDonald’s Monopoly game.
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