A Monopoly Peel to Play game sticker is seen on a McDonald’s Corp. Big Mac hamburger arranged for a photograph in Tiskilwa, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, April 15, 2016. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
McDonald’s announced that it will bring back its cult-classic Monopoly game next month.
What they’re saying:
“M0N0pOLY OCTOBER!!! 1-844-GT-URBAG….YOU MIGHT WANNA DOWNLOAD MCD APP,” the fast- food chain posted on its Instagram page.
What you can do:
The company hasn’t released details on how the latest version of the Monopoly game will be played.
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History of McDonald’s Monopoly game
The backstory:
Starting in 1985, the fast-food company operated a promotional game where customers could collect spaces on a McDonald’s Monopoly board by peeling the spaces off of McDonald’s products.
Participants would then mail the pieces in to collect their prize. The grand prize stood at $1 million.
The game then underwent multiple revisions.
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McDonald’s Monopoly game scandal
Dig deeper:
In the 1990s, McDonald’s lost $24 million in a scandal centering on its popular Monopoly game, according to FOX Business.
The fraud was largely the result of one man being in charge of security for the winning game pieces, according to former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi previously told FOX Business. The man, ex-cop Jerry Jacobson, used security tags he received outside of the normal audit process to alter the game pieces, Rensi continued.
The crime went unnoticed, according to Rensi, until Doug Matthews, an FBI agent in Jacksonville, Florida, noticed a cluster of winners in the area.
The FBI feigned a news story about the Monopoly game-winners in order to get them all in the same room to determine exactly what was going on, Rensi added. All of the winners turned out to be relatives of the man in charge of security, according to Rensi.
Rensi said McDonald’s even continued the game longer than it otherwise would have in order to “round up all the crooks.”
He noted nobody really won the big prizes on offer. On one occasion, Rensi received a letter from a woman who had won a $50,000 prize but asked McDonald’s to donate the money to St. Jude’s because she did not need it.
More than 50 people were convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy. In 2001, Jacobson was sentenced to serve three years in prison and was forced to pay back $12.5 million in damages.
The Source: The information in this story comes from McDonald’s official Instagram announcement teasing the return of the Monopoly game, along with historical context from prior reporting on the promotion’s origins in 1985 and its enduring popularity. This story was reported from Los Angeles.