Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 4: We're joined today by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte,
authors and filmmakers of the hit HBO Max series of
MC millions.
Speaker 3: James and Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 6: It's a real pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 4: So let's start by having you both tell us a
little bit about yourselves and your work as both filmmakers
and now as writers.
Speaker 5: Well start, I'm James just you know, the voice that
goes with the name. I'm a writer, director, producer. Don
mcmillions did The Big Con for Apple TV plus, which
we also did companion podcasts for mcmillions and The Big Con.
Recently produced a three part documentary series on the history
of Lollapaluza called Lala The Story of Lollapluza for Paramount Plus.
Did a podcast called scam Town that's an Apple original podcast.
Started a company with Brian called fun Meter.
Speaker 6: So I'm Brian, the other writer, producer director in the partnership.
Here to not repeat everything, Jane just said, we had
a lot of fun and just really feel so fortunate
and grateful that we've been able to make so many
awesome projects with great people over the years and really diversify,
you know, getting to start as filmmakers with mcmillions, having
that launch into the Big un and then transition to like, oh,
let's write the book and continue on the podcast journey.
It's like, Yeah, the future is wide open, and it's
really fun to explore different methods of storytelling because we
just we love that process so much.
Speaker 2: So we have an important question, and Kristin and I
were debating this just before we started. Now, what's the
origin of the name fund Meter. We think we know,
but we want to hear it from the creative team.
Speaker 5: One of the revelations of mcmillions was this FBI agent
named Doug Matthews. For anybody who's seen the show, you understand.
If you haven't seen the show, what have you been doing?
Go watch it. But there is ANBI agent who's a
rookie agent at the time of this investigation, and he
is atypical of what anybody else would anyone would think
of an FBI agent. The you know, wear dark gray
or black suit. Say as few words as possible, just
really what you see in the movies. This guy was
if you ever met him, you'd never think he was
an FBI agent. People thought we cast an actor to
play an agent.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: He's a real life person, real life agent, And so
he always talked about how regular FBI work would be boring,
and all he wanted to do was tag things. He
would say, I want to do things that tag my
phon meter. And so when it was time to name
our company, like that is such a perfect name for
the type of things that we want to do.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's fantastic, and you're right.
Speaker 4: He absolutely is not the thing that anybody would picture
when they think about an FBI agent. And of course,
at this point Bill and I have met several. He
is unlike any other agent that I've ever seen, and
he's probably the most colorful character in a post of
colorful characters in this really amazing story. So let's kind
of get into the origin of this. How did the
McDonald's monopoly scam even come on to your radar in
the first place.
Speaker 6: Well, I triggered out James's radar many years ago, so
I'll let him kick off his origin story for this
wild tale.
Speaker 5: It started with back in twenty twelve. Like most people
who can't sleep at night these days, I would just
go through Reddit, like the website Reddit and laugh at
dumb cat videos or things like that and helped me
just like conk out for the night. And they have
these tilS. Today I learned I just came across today.
I learned nobody really won the McDonald's monopoly game. Like
most people who grew up in the nineties and two
thousands and eighties, like that was everything. When the McDonald's
Monopoly game happened. You very specifically made your parents, if
you're a kid, go to different McDonald's than normal to
try and get different pieces. If you're on a road trip,
you had to stop on the way in different states.
You know, it was massive, massive, massive thing, and at minimum,
you know a lot of times you're getting fries, free milkshakes,
but you wanted to win that million dollar prize or
at least a CD or a Second Genesis something like that.
So when I saw that, clicked on it and it
was just a local note like Jacksonville newspaper article, it
was like twenty twelve, Yeah, this is this was in
twenty twelve, and then the article was from two thousand
and one when the bust all happened, and I'd like
had to know more having been obsessed with the game,
Like these people robbed me of my million dollars?
Speaker 2: What happened? I wanted, you're rightful winning, Yeah, that's my money.
Speaker 5: So I looked for the book. I looked for any
information on it, and there really was nothing other than
just the basic stuff that you could search on Google.
But it really I needed the in depth look into
all of that, and so Over the years, I would
just continue to chip away at it, looking at it,
and then I finally put a freedom of information requests
in with the US government that only took three years
to go through. And then when it finally.
Speaker 2: Went through, Yeah, good luck at that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was able to find out that the main
federal prosecutor who was involved, and the main FBI agent
who was involved. And so I reached out to them
and you know, found them on LinkedIn, talked to them,
and you know, they said, look, this is our favorite case.
No one's ever talked to us about this before. Yeah,
let's let's talk about it. So that point, I had done,
you know, scripted work. I really hadn't done any documentary stuff.
And Brian, who I knew because I used to work
for Brian's wife at Hallmark. She introduced me to Brian
and I like we'd known each other. But I called
up Brian and said, look, man, I think I've got
something really big. And Brian has this huge history documentaries.
I mean he's had like eight movies at Sundance Film Festival,
stuff nominated for huge awards. His track record speaks for itself.
So then we sat down at lunch and I could
have laid everything out for him.
Speaker 6: And it wasn't a McDonald's that we met with, by
the way it should have been, because.
Speaker 2: It would have been appropriate on bread.
Speaker 6: Although I wonder if you were like, let's meet McDonald's,
I might not have been Mike as enthusiastic. Although it
was the most about of McDonald's I think I had
eaten in recent years while working on this project. No,
I mean I think it was just like super excited
by the prospect of it. I mean, just like, on
the surface of it, it's like, oh, from nineteen eighty
nine to two thousand and one, every person who claimed
a high value game piece of the McDonald's monopoly was
part of a fraudulent group of people that ended up
getting taken down by the FBI in a massive undercover
sting operation. Like, yeah, the surface of that sounds like perfect,
like I'd watch that, But then yeah, you start to wonder,
like is there enough, are the characters strong enough? Is
it as good as we hope it could be? But
it was enough obviously out of the gate that had
just sent us on this mission of fact finding, mission
of like, Okay, what else is out there? Let's start
talking to people, and the more we talk to people,
the more we realize, like, oh, this is something special.
And you know, we spent about a year developing it,
and then we partnered with some friends of mine that
I knew became friends, obviously James who run another company
called Unrealistic Ideas, and Mark Wahlberg, Steve Levinson and Archie Gibbson.
We took an HBO and we were off to the
races pretty much right away.
Speaker 2: There's so many questions that I have right out of
the choot. Let me ask two. One is I mean
years had gone by? How was it that no one
else had ever glommed onto this story? I mean, it's
an amazing story, and you tell it really well. And
I ended up completely sucked into the six episode television
version of the story. How the heck had no one
else ever wont of this? I mean, does it take
James reading Reddit in the middle of the night to
finally put it on someone's radar?
Speaker 5: The reason that nobody heard about this was the arrest
happened two weeks before this incident, and then the first
actual arraignment and like starting to get people into court
happened two weeks before September eleventh, news broke, and then
as people were starting to go to court just to
like as their beginning operations of arrangement and all of
that for the case. The first day of that happened
on September eleventh, two thousand and one, and like everything
the world stopped. All of the news was now about this,
And rightfully, so, who cares about somebody stealing some game pieces?
We have much bigger fish to fry in this situation.
But that totally wiped it out of the news.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was telling Bill off Air that growing up
in the eighties, nineties and two thousands, I was hyper
aware of that man game, as are I think most
people who are my age.
Speaker 3: But I was also.
Speaker 4: Remarking to him, I don't remember when it slipped off
my radar. It just for some it was like there
one day, and then I didn't track that it had
gone because I saw the book before I saw the movie.
Speaker 3: As soon as I saw.
Speaker 4: This on the book sort of shelf, I was like, oh,
this sounds fantastic. But I also realized I had no
idea when the Monopoly game sort of fell off the
pop culture radar.
Speaker 3: So that was really interesting.
Speaker 4: An interesting component of the story for sure, Bill, did
you ask your second question?
Speaker 2: Well, the second question is and I still can't get
over this one either. And this makes perfect sense in
terms of the tie into nine to eleven. And I
do understand how it kind of wiped the slake clear.
I was living in New York at that point and
we lost friends on nine to eleven, And I understand
how the whole world kind of turned upside down and
that was the focus. How the heck did McDonald's never
figure out that all these people are related in some way,
either by blood or by marriage or by being connected
to the same mob family. How in the world did
they never figured this out?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, it's almost easy in hindsight, right to
look back and say, like, oh, there were a lot
of people that all kind of lived not far from
each other, right, But some of those people when they
claimed their prize, they claimed it at a different address
and they had different last names, even though that some
of them were related. So even the FBI, like, when
they started putting this together, they thought, oh, there's maybe
just a few people connected, And it wasn't until they
started digging in that they realized, oh, wait a minute, Okay,
now we can see the pattern. There's these recruiters, you know,
that are working for Jerry Jake, Like then you know
Jerry Jake like said it was Uncle Jerry. There was
this you know, mystical figure the helm of this that
you know, sounded straight out of a movie, like Uncle Jerry.
And that's all they kind of got. They so for
those who don't know kind of the seed of the story.
It got triggered by this this tip that came in
to the FBI. And Rick Den, who was like the
senior agent, had written on a note pad like a
little post it note McDonald's monopoly question mark and had
it like just on his desk. And he was like
this very stoic, by the book, you know, religious type
of typical FBI agent. And Doug Matthews was like the
odd couple, a typical rookie, loudmouth, brash, wouldn't stop moving,
followed the shiny object kind of an agent. He saw
this post it note one day, it was like, what
is that? I was like, Oh, it's probably you know.
Rick Dad was like it's probably nothing, and Doug Matthews insisted, well,
can I look into it. It's like I knock yourself
out essentially, and he comes back with this, like he
calls this informant that had called in this tip and
had gotten like three names in this like mystical name
of Uncle Jerry. So we always kind of knew that,
like the you know, the way that starts, like any
kind of investigation, it's like it's one name, it's one number,
and then this thing just ballooned out to like, okay,
fifty at the end, fifty three people were indicted across
twenty three states, So it was it was enormous fraud.
Speaker 4: As a high school teacher who teaches both filmmaking and writing,
I know the creative process for doing both have a
lot of similarities, but they also have in some ways
wild differences between them.
Speaker 3: Which of these did you find you.
Speaker 4: Enjoyed creating more the documentary or the book or is
that like asking you to choose a favorite child in.
Speaker 5: A sense a little bit, choose your favorite child. But I,
at least to me, it all feels like one thing
because when we first doing the documentary, the story was
so big and so sprawling, and as we laid all
of it out and started really talking about it and
figuring everything out, it was just too big to like
wrap your head around, but then also to continue to
explain everybody that would bring on our team to help
us make this whole thing. So Brian and I did
this did something that I mean, I haven't seen it
a ton in documentary, but we wrote the entire story out.
We adjusted it as we went as we learned more things,
but we basically created a seventy page bible of what
the entire story is. That was. It was really helpful
because anytime we brought people out or like read this
and now you'll it'll be really easy to get caught
up to speed. And it contained like all you know,
the research we've been doing for over the years and
all the people we talked to, and as we learn
more things, we would adjust it just because Brian and
I basically and it says, didn't know any better or
wanted it to be an entertaining read. We wrote it
like it was a not like it was a book,
and that ultimately was the base structure for what became
mcmillions the novel. So we like unintentionally really were already
creating it as we were making the show, and then
we learned all these new things that we couldn't even
fit into, like even though it's a six part documentary series,
there were all these other tentacles that we couldn't really
go down in a visual medium, but we knew we
could go into books, so then we started writing those out.
Funny enough, it kind of is the same thing. And
then when it got time to really buckle down and
write the book, then we have to add in all
these new pieces that weren't in the documentary or in
the podcast that were really exciting. So it was fun
to revisit it after we had finished and done all
the documentary stuff. So you know, they're like twins. You
like the twins the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's something special about the first time that you
learn information and your mind is blown and you're like, oh,
like no, there's no way this can happen. But then
you know, many years later, revisiting some things for the book,
it's like, oh, I remember, like I totally forgot that detail,
like how did we? How do we? It was like
you get another chance at that to like see what
else is there to discover and a way to do it.
But writing, I think writing is far more solitary in
a lot of ways when you're making the doc version
of this, you're just you're constantly like surrounding yourself with
other creatives to share input and collectively help challenge your
way of thinking about the story. And there's something just
I think a little more rewarding about that personally.
Speaker 2: Which parts more rewarding for you.
Speaker 6: Making the dock making the doc like out of the
gate when you're working with other people and like other
people challenge you in that sense, Like I mean, aside
from you know, I think most people think of like, oh, well,
the book comes first, and then comes the documentary and
the film, and we're just saying, hey, it doesn't matter
what order, we're going to go backwards.
Speaker 2: I see documentary filmmaking and the work that you all
do as that's much more of a team sport than
sitting down at the computer. And even if the two
of you, you know, divved this up somehow, writing seems
like a much more solitary kind of activity.
Speaker 5: Yep, seem it is. You can make a film by yourself,
but other than Rodriguez making al Mariachi by himself, like
in a city, it usually it's just you need so
many people to create this entire thing. And when you're writing,
you know, a certain point, it's just you on a
computer screen or a typewriter depending on or a free hand.
You know, I don't want to hate on Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the seventy page Bible, even though that would have
been a lot of work for you to create, it
seems like a more efficient way to fill in people
as you added people to your team. In other words,
here's the basics, and here's what the story we're trying
to tell. Short version, not as long as the book.
Was that designed as an efficiency step to bring people
up to speed.
Speaker 6: I think it was a combination of It was just
part of our process because when you're taking on a
multi part series, you got to figure out, okay, like
what is episode one going to be? What is episode
two going to be? And you start to really need
to map out what is that creative path. And it's
useful not only for ourselves, I think first and foremost
to like really kind of understand how do we want
to lay out the story. And one of the things
that we did very much so in the documentary series
and we mirror it a little bit in the book,
was we wanted to kick it off out of the
gate from the FBI's point of view, and our whole
first episode of our documentary series is only told from
the FBI's point of view, and it doesn't shift until
we get into the second episode. I was by design,
and we wanted to lay that out not only for
our partners, but also for the for HBO and the
network to say, like, hey, here's how we want to
plot this thing out. You know you kind of wonder like,
is in hindsight, yes, it works, but like in the moment,
you do get those questions from your creative colleagues to say, well,
wait a minute. Here you have Robin Colombo, and you
have aj Glum, and you have all these really colorful
characters that were quote unquote winners who defrauded McDonald's. Here,
why aren't you putting them up front in the first episode?
And you just you know, James and I we made
that choice out of the gate, and we were so
lockstep and like, this is the way to take people
into the story. It is a choice. Laid it out
on paper helped us convey how we were going to
do it and why it would be an effective path.
Speaker 4: Now, the FBI can be notoriously closed lipped as we're
well aware when it comes to talking about their investigative work,
either to victims families, to writers, to producers, to the press.
Was the FBI helpful during this process or did you
really have to kind of pry away at them to
get some.
Speaker 3: Helpful interviews.
Speaker 5: We were very fortunate in this situation. Yes, the FBI
is notoriously tight lipped. Understandably, I mean they're after seeing
the inner workings of an investigation. Anything could sway that
in such a bad direction for them. We were fortunate
in the sense that this was a fully adjudicated case
that had happened over a decade ago. Also, we had
the positive side of it wasn't about a mass murder
or something like that. It was again about something that
can kind of be taken lightly, so they weren't worried
about it affecting any other cases or anything like that.
And then the agents themselves, I mean, one, it helps
if there were so half of about half of them
were retired already from the FBI. And then those who
were not retired. Because of the high profile nature of
this case and because of what we were building and
how we were going about it, they were far more
open than we ever imagined that they would be. But
that really just goes to show how helpful every investigator
that was part of this was for us. I mean
they all went to bat when they're now talking to
higher ups or talking to the talking to the public
affairs people, you know, at headquarters of the FBI, to
really vouch for what we're doing, that we're going about
this the right way. We weren't going for any like
gotcha moments. We weren't trying to take a crazy curve
and paint them in a bad light. You know, it
was really fascinating. Just look, we're going to unravel this
investigation of frond your eyes and see just how crazy
and how wild and how inventive this whole thing is.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was surprised by was the
openness of the agents. And I think we can all
agree that Doug Matthews is such a character. I mean,
he's really just a fascinating individual and he is very entertaining.
My partner Pamela and I found ourselves smiling every time
he appeared on camera because he's irreverent and funny, and
he's a good storyteller himself. Part of the challenge I
would imagine when you've got somebody who's that kind of
charismatic and fun and is the originator of the fund meter.
Was it difficult to trim down to these key moments
with a guy like Doug Matthews.
Speaker 6: I think yes and no. Doug if he describes himself
as always chasing this shiny object, and I mean we
kept in a few moments where he was like, yeah,
I know, I'm going off on a little tangent. I mean,
he likes to go off on tangents. But I think,
you know, the spirit of it was always there and intact,
and it was just like this was a you know,
wide eye, like you know, eager or bright eyed, eager
or FBI agent who just he was unafraid to speak
his mind and share like what he thinks is the
way to go about doing it, which was like, oh,
let's go undercover. You know, he was being shot down
time and time again, and then finally it clicked for
one of the more senior agents who was there and
realized like, okay, wait a minute, that maybe there is
a way to make this work. And I think we
just always approached it as like we wanted the audience
to feel as if they were part of the investigation, right,
like that you're playing along that we're never getting too
far ahead of where they are in what they're discovering
along the way, and a lot of ways, there was
kind of this kindred spirit of sorts that we had
as filmmakers because as FBI agents, like you're digging into
the facts and you're trying to help see, Okay, what
is the story that you're going to tell to get
the federal prosecutor on board? Right? And for us it
was like, oh, what's the story we tell to get
the network on board? And you're shaping them like you
would go into trial to like, you know, put it
in an in an order that can convey that the
path of what your takeaway is at the end. And
so we just kind of approached it as likes that
same spirit and Doug being kind of all over the place,
it was like, okay, wherever we could rate him, and
we could. But I think the first time James met
with him by himself, it was like at nine o'clock
at night. It was like a three hour or more session,
and then when we sat down together, I think it
was like it was six hours of sixty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was it was six It was easily six.
It was six hours of actual sitting there and talking.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he didn't stop. It was like the energizer Bunny
got a certain point where like, don't you need to eat?
We need to eat? All right, Well, I got a
power bar. You guys can go and be lazy over
there in the corner and get back to this. But really, yeah,
he was one of kind energy.
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Speaker 4: I was really hoping that agent Rick Dent was going
to make an appearance.
Speaker 3: It deemed based on the way that you described him.
Speaker 4: I pretty much before I even started watching the documentary,
I was like, they're not going to get this guy.
But I assume you asked him. Did he ever reply
like in person, yes I will do this or no?
Or did he just ghost you entirely? What was the
deal with Rick?
Speaker 5: So Rick, we actually met with him and spent two
three hour sessions talking to him about this stuff. And
then he is a very private person. He took his
work with that FBI extremely seriously because he knew that
the thing that he was doing. His job, was affecting
people's civil liberties, so that he was very very serious
about it. So when we met with him, we talked
to him for two days in a row, three hours each,
and then he was open to us like whenever we
had questions or if we needed a fact check anything.
He was great about letting us call him and disturb
him in his everyday life because with documentaries you have
to remember and any true story. He's not an actor
that's just like this, let's tell this story together. I mean,
he's a real life with a wife and kids and
stuff that he does. So he was very kind to
share his time with us, and he really helped paint
the picture and understand things, especially in details that you
see in the book that you don't necessarily see in
the documentary because he's not there to say it, but
a lot of that stuff made it into the book.
We were sitting there with him at a restaurant the
first night, the first day and Doug said, he he
do his human light detector test to you, and you
could just tell when you're talking to him, you could
see him looking through you into you. So yeah, it
was he was everything that we that we imagined and
it was great to be able to talk to him,
but unfortunately he wasn't in the doctor.
Speaker 2: So when you talk about sessions, though, are we talking
about on camera or off?
Speaker 6: This was this was off. We we met with him
in person. We were maybe three or four hours away
from where he lived, and he did ghost us for
a long time. We were trying to get him on
board and he wouldn't respond to anything. And then we
won't say exactly what it was, but we sent him
like basically a hail Mary passion play letter and there
was there was one one trigger that just like had
him respond right away, and it was it was a
great moment for us. One thing, the one thing I
remember beyond just the human life detector like moment, was
he explained that, you know, after he'd retired, he hadn't
gone back to those files and that like when he
was in an investigation, he was kind of all in
like that was like everything all his focus, you know,
his attention to detail was like extremely meticulous, but when
he moved on from a case, he purged a lot
of that mental space for other things. And he said
that he was worried that like if he got a
fact wrong. How would it be perceived if he said
the wrong thing on camera?
Speaker 2: And you know, we.
Speaker 6: Tried to explain to him that, like, you can say
what you think you remember, and obviously we can fact
check ourselves and if there's something you know, we were
trying to be playful about it or open to But
I think for him it was just he said he'd
have to the only way he would do it is
if he felt comfortable reopening all his own files. And
it was something like it was like just the thought
of it, you know, makes my heart beat a little
too fast for where I am in retirement at the moment.
Speaker 4: So when I was sort of picturing Doug and Rick,
I was I'm going to date myself horribly by saying this.
I was thinking of Agent J and Agent K from
Men in Black. First of only you got Tommy Lee
Jones and Will Smith, And I was picturing Rick as
the Tommy Lee Jones character.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get that to leave.
Speaker 4: So actually I was sort of hoping he would show
up in the documentary, if only so that I could
get the image of Tommy.
Speaker 3: Lee Jones out of my head.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's he's basically that just definitely taller than Tommy
Lee johs Ok.
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask a question. Then, who else did
you want that you did not get.
Speaker 5: There's there's only there's only one. But I don't know.
I mean, I guess at this point we can, Yeah,
we can. We can read this prie.
Speaker 2: We're going to break. We'll help you break the story.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, Yeah, Jerry and Jacobson himself, Uncle Jerry. He
was the one. We ended up not getting him for
the documentary after trying a million things like sending him letters.
I mean, we don't. I think the only thing we
didn't try is like doing like skywriting outside of his.
Speaker 2: House Jerry, Uncle Jerry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, answer our phone calls. Ultimately, you know, he he
didn't participate, but we had built up so much and
he actually testified, so we had his entire story laid out.
We knew everything, every single detail. And then of course
we had all like you know, Mark Devereau, who had
spent a ton of time with him, his lawyer, you know,
Jerry Jacobs, as lawyers were involved all of it. So
we had that entire side painted without really needing him.
In a certain sense. You know, it's like a like
a scary movie like the idea of the bad guys
almost better than meeting them, so didn't have that. But then,
you know, interestingly enough, we've had some phone calls with
him since we've we've learned some things from him that
were really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Now, why would he talk to you after the fact,
do you think?
Speaker 6: I think more of it just comes down to time
and perspective, and I think it was an unexpected we
caught him. But the more interesting thing for us is
like how we we think it would have been great
for him to participate, not only for us but also
for him. Like anybody that said no to us at first,
it was based on fear and trepidation that this was
the worst thing that ever happened in their life. They've
already been embarrassed by it. Once, you know, for the
most part, they've moved on. We really feel that anybody
that did participate, people could see their side of the
story and have come around to accepting them as you know,
as real people that we're going through something at the
time and could really relate. And that was you know,
we always felt like, had he participated, and maybe one
day he will, you know, want to really sit down
and talk to us at length about it, and maybe
there's another season to be had, But the goal was
really just like, here's an opportunity for you to share
what you were going through at the moment. And Gloria Brown,
if you look at her story, I mean, it's kind
of a case in point, like textbook example. We only
knew Gloria Brown initially from the FBI's point of view,
and if, like James have said before, like if you
just google her, you're just like, oh, okay, federal criminal
defrauded the McDonald's moth. Like in your head, you kind
of paint the picture as to like who you think
she is. You see that archival video from the FBI,
and you're like, oh, yeah, she's lying through her teeth,
Like this is someone that was just trying to get
one over on a major corporation. But when we sat
down with her one morning for breakfast and we started
to really understand what she was going through and the
pressure she was feeling from the mob and Jerry Colombo,
we had this empathy and we thought, this is what
people need to hear, and no one's ever heard this
version of the story before. And the fact that she
came around like when you watch that, you get to
see the two different perspectives, and you realize, like, oh wait,
there is a human side to this that I wasn't
factoring into this criminal enterprise. You know, that was the
case for everybody really that participated. That was you know,
quote unquote winner.
Speaker 2: One of the shocking things for me actually was the
at one point one of the participants, but I would
also argue they are victims. She was actually sitting down,
remember if it was Gloria or one of the other participants,
and actually did the math in terms of, Okay, here's
the prize I received, and then it's a fifty fifty split,
and then they're paying the taxes and her net I
think was ten thousand dollars on whatever the prize was
one hundred thousand dollars, and you realize, oh my gosh,
these people have put themselves at phenomenal risk for actually
very little economic benefit. And I was just floored. I
guess the mob doesn't agree to go fifty to fifty
with you.
Speaker 5: After taxes, No, they're not worried about your tax burden.
It was really fascinating because so many people didn't realize
one that you had to pay taxes or the level
to which you have to pay them. I mean it's
it's a cold instant fifty gone. So that's on top
of anything else that you have to worry about. Yeah,
I mean this was when you looked at the numbers
and you looked at everything. And once this really started
to make this turn, when the mafia got involved, then
it was much more of an organized crime. I'm like, Okay,
this is how we do things. This is how we
take advantage of the situation. Like a million dollars sounds
like a lot to you, but you're actually going to
be taking a small amount and we're going to take
our cut, and you better have our cut every single
year or else really shows, you know. In Gloria Brown's
story where she was friends with Robin Colombo, she thinks
like this is her miracle that's going to happen. She
doesn't have to rob a bank, she just have to
pretend to win, Like, how is that even illegal? In
her eyes? At the end of the day, she ends
up being terrified because she feels like all of a sudden,
she's on this runaway train and there's no stopping it.
She's getting bossed around by Jerry Colombo and his goons,
and then you know, has to pay the taxes. She's
still trying to raise it. She has a single mom
trying to raise her son. And in the back of
her mind, she said, always she's wondering when when something
bad was going to happen, And yeah, when that when
that knock of the door was going to happen, And
eventually it did.
Speaker 2: I ended up feeling incredibly sympathetic towards these people. Well,
at first I was thinking, oh, you know, they're all crooks,
they're all in on it. But then when the story
begins to lay out and the threats are ramped up,
and you realize, wait a minute, these people aren't walking
away with one hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars
or whatever it is. It didn't sound like it changed
their life for the better. I mean, I think we
all have a fantasy that if you won the lottery
or won the mcmillion's game at McDonald's, that you'd be set.
And the truth is it was far from that, and
winning that game, if you will, didn't really improve these
people's lives, not one win.
Speaker 5: It ultimately comes down to that idea that yeah, you're
winning a million dollars and that sounds awesome, I mean,
especially in the eighties and nineties, but that doesn't translate
to that, and especially what these people were going through.
The only people to really benefit from this were the recruiters,
the people who are getting kickbacks on this. And then
ultimately you know uncle Jerry, Jerry Jacobson. I mean he
was buying lakefront property and boats and nice cars and
stuff you know like this. He really was the main
person who got the advantage of all of it.
Speaker 6: There was also like someone like George Chandler, who when
he first won the million dollars, he actually lost business
because there were clients who were like, oh what, you
don't need my money. You're a millionaire now, not realizing like,
oh wait a minute. You know, he gets paid in installments.
And then of course when it comes out that you know,
his foster father was you know, was the one who
gave him the game piece, and there was the whole
court case and everyone gets indicted. It's like, oh, wait
a minute, now he's a part of a fraud. And
you know, he had to crawl his way back. I mean,
he was such a successful young entrepreneur at a young age,
who initially saw this as like a business opportunity. He
was like, Okay, this makes financial sense, and like it's
coming from my foster father who is Mormon elder, Like
there's no way and what you know, he's trying to
bamboozle me. But you realize, like, just like how greed
can affect so many people at all these different levels,
and you know, they each kind of had their own
unique story, which I think also is what we found
so fascinating about, like what drew them to it and
what their experience was like in getting the game piece
and then lying about how they got the game piece.
Speaker 4: We talked top of the pod about the fact that
the Monopoly game is such a huge pop culture presence
that I kind of didn't recognize that it had faded out.
Can you guys address what was the fate of the
Monopoly game after this whole thing came out? Do you
think that sweepstakes games of that type are going to
come back into vogue at some point or are we
done with it because of what happened with mcmillions?
Speaker 5: You know it, it's funny as soon as this happened,
of course, they cut that game off, you know, to
McDonald's credit. Even though they knew that they were going
to be in the line of fire, they ran this
game one more time because the FBI asked them to,
and they knew they were going to get sued. They
knew everything about this was not good. And usually for
corporations where we were always fascinated by the idea that
you know, you're used to the corporate greed thing of
like if we just cut this out now and don't participate,
no one will be the wiser, right, we just kind
of brushed us under the rug. But you know, FBI
and their CEO at the time, Jack Greenberg, said he
did what he would want to do, which he thought
was best for his customers. So they participated. And this
comes out McDonald's Monopoly game is toast. So McDonald's doesn't
run that again. And then to make up for it,
they ran another game which we talked about in the
book and is in the documentary, where they gave away
twenty million dollars over the span of twenty weeks. I
think it was like one, you know, a million dollars
every week and Amy Murray and at home to people
who worked it at McDonald's at the time, that really
helped the FBI with all of this, had to run
the game internally because usually, and this is the crux
of how this whole scam worked was, you know, a
marketing company runs a game like this. For a large
company like McDonald's, they had to run it internally, and
then these two people were really spearheading this entire effort.
So as far as the future things, we still see
the sweep stakes all the time. McDonald's hasn't run the
Monopoly game in well over a decade, but you know,
like in southern California, Vaughn's and Ralphs have both you know,
have run the Monopoly game, and other places we've seen
just different sweep stakes like that happen. There are far
better security protocols these days, so hopefully they do come back.
I personally really hope that McDonald's does run the Monopoly
game again, just for the nostalgia factor alone.
Speaker 2: How did McDonald's react to the documentary when it came out.
Speaker 6: You know, they were great team players. I mean they
were the hardest to get on board. In fact, we
didn't know if we would actually get them in the
documentary in time, like from the first outreach to them
finally coming around. I think it was like eighteen months,
so we were like nearing a fine cut or a
locked cut of our first episode. When we finally got
the okay, they were, you know, one of the and
you know, we went out, we met them in person.
We kind of did the whole song and dance, explained
to them what we wanted to do and why we
wanted to do it, just time their corporate turnover and
reorgs and things that were happening while we were in pursuit.
Once they participated, you know, we were kind of in
lockstep with them for a couple things, like the in
the recreations, you know, the cinematic we found in old
McDonald's that had not been renovated to you know what
you see McDonald's today. We're like, we'd like to shoot
at this McDonald's. And they said, well, you're going to
have to get corporate to like to approve it. And
so we went back to our people at McDonald's and said, hey,
we like to do this, and you know, we went
through the whole procedure and they were like, okay, we'll
let you do it. We'll let you convert the whole
place into like you know, nineties nostalgic McDonald's.
Speaker 3: The only thing.
Speaker 6: We ask is you don't film behind the cook line
because there's proprietary technology or something like that. Like, you know,
they didn't want they didn't want us getting like showing
people like what was behind the front line. And then
once we saw like once we you know, once we
had the cut done. We actually premiered at Sundance twenty
twenty right before the world shut down, and all the
execs or the main execs that we had met with,
actually came out to Sundance.
Speaker 2: They did that surprises now.
Speaker 6: They were there and you know, alongside we had the
federal prosecutor. We had a couple of them. You know,
Gloria Brown was there, which was also kind of just
and it was like Gloria Brown with like Amy Murray. Yeah,
we like seeing each other for the first time since
the undercover operation, like that was the last time that
they had seen each other. It was it was surreal.
It was like a wild ride for us. But everyone
was really happy with with how it turned out, not
only those who were trepidacious about participating, but McDonald's themselves.
I mean, in a lot of ways, we just thought
that it was such a peculiar thing that they sent
somebody from internally to help the FBI in an investigation
go undercover. Like when does that happen? Like that's that's
a great Like we're not talking about what's in the
chicken mcnautiguts here, We're just talking about how in the
world they they found the person who was behind this
monopoly McDonald's fraud case.
Speaker 4: Okay, wait, I have to know where is the unrenovated
nineties Mickey D's. I really really want to never are
you not allowed.
Speaker 3: To tell us?
Speaker 5: We Well, we can tell you because it has since
been renovated. I think it's like a month after we
filmed there, they leveled it and renovated it. So it
was in the valley in California out correct in Los Angeles.
I forget exactly it was like Sun Valley.
Speaker 6: I think it was actually that we were lucky that
it was in like in southern California, because we had
somebody that was working with us internally. I think that
called like a hundred McDonald's or something like that to
find out who had been renovated. We talked about building
one or kind of creating the set of one, and
it was so cool to be able to go in there,
and we shut one down for the afternoon.
Speaker 4: I want one of the ones with the big play
place outside, you know.
Speaker 3: With all of the old school characters.
Speaker 5: Everything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the shots that we have is you're seeing
the McDonald's a monopoly like sign being put up, like
they are the person who slides the letters in. Yeah,
and the background is the big play place and you
see the old brown tile roof and it was just
nostalgia for days.
Speaker 2: One of the things I noticed both of you are
in your office now and you're in separate offices. Both
of you have a mcmillion's poster on your wall, and
then I'm holding a copy of the book. The graphics
are very close to what McDonald's uses. You've got golden
arches appearing. Was there any pushback there? I mean, this
isn't a book that is written by the McDonald's corporation
or exactly about the McDonald's corporation. Did they have to
give you permission to use these graphic elements that.
Speaker 5: They do not? Because there's a certain percentage that you
can change an image, so you can hint at something,
but it isn't the thing itself, So like that's why
very specifically, like you see a sliver of one side
of the arch, your brain fills in the gap.
Speaker 2: And the McDonald's character whatever his name is McDonald, Yeah,
well I think that's you know, Daddy Warbucks or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the guy who's behind Brian on the wall.
Speaker 2: Right, you're also you're also doing the same thing there,
which is you're showing just enough to make the suggestion correct.
Speaker 6: It's definitely more of a legal question from from what
they say is okay, but yeah, I mean it's yeah,
we're not looking at it as like this is as
Jim said, your mind can fill in in the rest
and that that's the most important thing. I mean obviously,
like you know, those colors are synonymous with they're pretty
common colors. But yeah, you also see with a lot
of fast food companies, and you know, this is a
story that's rooted in in a fast food giant. Part
of it is important to like make the connection out
of the gate.
Speaker 2: But suggest without necessarily crossing over the line or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, James has said, a massive bottle of coke.
Speaker 5: Behind you, Yeah it is. It's from another project that
we film that isn't out yet, but we had to
create it for this funny scenario that happens in it,
like that's we're not throwing that thing away.
Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta keep that thing. Yeah, this looks
to be like a six foot tall bottle of Coca Col's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's pretty close. It probably is about six foot.
Speaker 6: You know this video, I would suggest that you you
put it on because it's I.
Speaker 5: Don't physically fit. I've tried. It's terrible, much smaller than me.
Speaker 4: Well, that actually does bring us to our our final question,
which is what is next for both of you? And
apparently the next project involves six foot wearable Coca Cola bottles.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, we've had the good fortune this last
year of having a lot of you know, like not
of our book come out, but we had an eleven
part podcast, an Apple Original podcast called Scamtown that is
eleven unique, quirky, stranger than fiction stories. So if you're
a fan of mcmillions, or if you had a chance
to see The Big Con, which is also an Apple
Original series which we were really proud of how that
turned out, Scamtown is a perfect extension of the types
of crime stories that we've been into.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we also had although to be a debut at
south By Southwest and twenty twenty three with the Hurricanes
that's coming out soon, which we produced. It's about the
first all women's tackle football league that existed in the
late sixties early seventies and one of the main the
main teams in that is really fascinating story.
Speaker 2: You guys have had the ability to do, which both
Kristin and I found very interesting. You are finding stories
that many other people haven't told or the rest of
us in the world didn't know about. Is that a
conscious effort on your part to say, man, this is
a great story. And I don't think anybody's ever written
about this or talked about this.
Speaker 6: I think that yeah, when a story, when you find
a story or you know, and I mean the case
I make millions. It was just like how you stumble
upon things, and you know, it's very easy to just
throw something away or just be like, oh, that was
like a fleeting moment and whatnot. And there's always like
there can be an article or something out there that
you read it and you're like, oh wow, that made
me think. But it takes like a real leap to say, okay,
I'm going to invest the next year or two of
my life for the deep dive into aggregating maybe information
that could be out there in the public sphere, but
going far, far deeper than what's already been brought to
the surface, and say like, okay, think about this in
terms of the multiple layer you know, and how deep
this story goes to create this compelling story. I mean,
the big con was like, it's like a real life
Saw Goodman story, you know, and we loved better call Saul,
and it's like the fact that there's like this flamboyant
attorney that had every billboard in town and defrauded the
federal government out of five hundred million dollars over multiple years.
And then finally when he gets busted, like cuts his
angle bit bracelet off and goes on the run. It
was just like, how how is this story not out
there in the public sphere? Like in a way, and
we just you know, we got fortunate that in that case,
we get we got the main person, We got er
Con to talk to us, and hearing you know, from
him directly, you've got a whole new perspective on what
was going through his mind, you know, as these crimes
were unfolding. So I mean, we're always looking for things
that haven't been told or might have only like been
told in an immorsel of a story, to see how
much deeper it can go.
Speaker 7: The book is called mcmillion's The Absolutely True Story of
how an unlikely pair of FBI agents brought down the
most supersized fraud in fast food history, and the documentary
is a six parter available on is It HBO Max.
Speaker 5: It's on HBO Linear and Max streaming.
Speaker 3: James Brian this was an absolute delight.
Speaker 4: The book is wonderful, the documentary is wonderful, and we
have loved having you on with us.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 6: This is great, this is fun.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mind over Murder.