My aunt worked for Simon Marketing for many years. She was a designer. My cousin was pictured on a fry box once. All of their drinking glasses were McDonald's promos, much like a software developer's swag t-shirt collection. They had these Mickey Mouse glasses I loved but that had a habit of shattering into a million pieces under the slightest thermal shock or bump. She had a full collection of the 101 Dalmatians Happy Meals toys. We were all sure that'd be worth a lot of money some day. Looks like it's worth 50-100 USD on ebay now.<p>She lost her job, since this racket destroyed Simon Marketing.
> <i>The colorful court case, held in Jacksonville, Florida, started September 10, 2001, the day before terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The stunned news media quickly forgot about the McDonald’s trial, which explains why so few Americans remember the scandal, or how it ended.</i><p>In the months/years after 9/11 I remember that a recurring theme in longform stories was that their events took place shortly before or after 9/11 and had collectively been forgotten. One that I still remember is a Sports Illustrated feature about 8 Wyoming college cross-country runners who died in the worst vehicle crash in Wyoming history [0]. Though maybe in today's 24/7+ media cycle and attention deficits, plenty of interesting stories slip through the cracks on a more regular basis.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.si.com/vault/2001/11/26/314466/cross-road-after-a-road-trip-to-celebrate-their-bonding-as-a-team-eight-university-of-wyoming-runners-made-the-fateful-choice-to-head-home-on-the-states-most-treacherous-highway" rel="nofollow">https://www.si.com/vault/2001/11/26/314466/cross-road-after-...</a>
There's a wonderful lesson in all of this to any current or future business owner: what is the minimum number of people in your organization that would need to secretly be dishonest to undermine what you do? And how much money is on the line encouraging those people to consider it?<p>In this case, the answer was one, and the amount of money was millions of dollars. Should we be surprised that it happened?
> Not long afterward, Jacobson opened a package sent to him by mistake from a supplier in Hong Kong. Inside he found a set of the anti-tamper seals for the game piece envelopes—the only thing he needed to steal game pieces en route to the factory.<p>While most people are focusing on the lack of human controls that allowed there to be a single person who could pull this off, I think an over looked issue was the over reliance on these tamper resistant seals. They had a single type of seal from a single supplier that was apparently used by itself to show tamper resistance.<p>This is actually less secure then the setup at the Starbucks I worked at where the tamper resistant bags had serial numbers on both the body of the bag and on a removable tag, so that if somebody was to open the bag (which you could only do by ripping it) and put it in a new bag, the serial number would no longer match.
A well-written and well-sourced article. I found it quite interesting. It's amazing how people seem to find a way around any regulation or control to satisfy basic greed.
It's mostly just shocking to me there isn't more separation of duties amongst a few people. The fact that one guy could pull this off suggests some major failure to consider single points of failure. He did allegedly have someone with him, but they didn't even sit in the same place on the plane!<p>The mark of a good security expert is that they will tell you the threat they themselves, potentially, are. (This is true for IT as well.)
"Before each bi-annual game, Jacobson arrived at the drab Dittler Brothers’ office at 5 a.m to observe their Omega III supercomputer making the McDonald’s prize draw."<p>Does anyone know what the 'Omega III supercomputer' is?
There was a similar story a couple months ago about the insider who rigged the lottery. I'm sorry, I don't recall the source.<p>In any case, the ones who get caught are done in by carelessness, and over-confidence. You have to wonder how many are not getting caught if they can manage these two faults.
Bit of trivia: the monopoly character was said to be based on Samuel Insull who became Edison's private secretary and right hand man.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=monopoly+game+%22samuel+insull%22" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=monopoly+game+%22samuel+insu...</a><p>Having successfully argued for the creation of regulated utility monopolies, he assembled a huge empire which subsequently collapsed in the Great Crash of 1929, investors and indeed himself were wiped out...
> "The camera crew listened patiently to his rambling story, silently recognizing the inconsequential details found in stories told by liars."<p>I'd love to learn more about this. How do you separate inconsequential details told by liars from inconsequential details told by excited people?
> When Jacobson revealed his scam, Hart, an honest businessman, found it too good to be true. But he agreed to try it, to “see if it worked,” recalled Jacobson.<p>I think I might have to revise my understanding of what it means to be an honest businessman.<p>It is depressing to me that greed so easily trumps morality.
I knew one winner. She won an Oldsmobile in 1988. Interesting enough, she was a Mormon so and had to ask permission from her elders to claim the prize. This was in Minnesota.
I found this funnier than I probably should have:<p>> a disgraced Ronald McDonald actor who was convicted of making harassing phone calls while posing as the clown
A fun-to-read-about (but not illegal) sweepstakes hack was done by a bunch of Caltech students in the 70s. Coincidentally, McDonald's was the target there, too. <a href="http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_caltech_sweepstakes_caper" rel="nofollow">http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_caltech_sweepstakes_...</a>
I remember working on a Monopoly game knockoff for Buddig meat at one of my first dev jobs. I wish we had put in nearly the same effort to protect the game as MCDs did. We had some "situations" also. Not this bad though.
McDonalds was dumb for entrusting the security of this system to one person. This is like security 101. If you want good physical security, you can't trust it to a single person.
Jacobson sent a $1m winning ticket to a hospital, where the donations clerk immediately turned it in. Imagine what would have happened if she'd decided to keep it for herself? I wonder whether and how Jacobson would have taken steps to expose her, without exposing himself.
I often wonder with the McMonopoly prize thing how often they pay out, from my observation quite a number of people just threw out their tickets, so it seemed like there was a good chance they didn't have to payout
I am pretty sure the only way you -can- win the Monopoly game is to rig it in your favor. It's not a game anyone is meant to win. That's likely why so much is spent trying to figure out how someone won. The only prizes anyone is meant to win are maybe an Xbox and free chicken McNuggets. In some ways I sympathize with the idea of playing the unwinnable system against itself.
I came across a situation where an asset protection head at a Walmart was looking the other way while an acquaintance would dress up in a suit, and put an expensive vacuum cleaner in a shopping cart and waltz out the car departments side door minutes after it opened each morning. An employee noticed this. Asked the person for a receipt and the scam came to an end. The employee, however, got wrote up by the asset protection head!He claimed he was just about to apprehend this fellow. But Walmart quickly ended their relationship with their asset protection head(Within weeks), while NOT GOING BACK TO THE SIMPLE EMPLOYEE and admitting any wrong in his being written up. This is why when people rob these huge corporations like this, nobody should care. They don't give 2 craps about honesty or integrity. They are more worried about a thief falling down, breaking an ankle, suing them for millions, than you helping them not lose assets.
I stopped reading the article as soon as they got to the part about him checking all the employees and even following them into the bathroom(Illegal BTW). This is why police departments have INTERNAL AFFAIRS DEPT. Just like pedophiles find a position of trust to prey upon kids, really accomplished scammers find one to take advantage of security. Where would a better position be than to head up the security! When they started giving examples of him check shoes, it reminded me that in my lifetime I realized the worse thieves are always worried about getting robbed! Because they figure if they thought of it, so haven't others. I was reading before that about all his ailments prior and thinking, the author hasn't figured out those were scams ..too!