HBO
(L-R) "McMillions" directors James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte.
- "McMillions" is a HBO six-part series that gives a deep dive into the fraud that surrounded McDonald's Monopoly game in the late 1980s and through the 1990s.
- Directors James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte talked to Business Insider to explain how they uncovered what happened.
- HBO's "McMillions" premieres on Monday.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The McDonald's Monopoly game was hugely popular in the late 1980s and through the 1990s.
You would walk into a McDonald's and, with your purchase, there would come a Monopoly game piece stuck to your soda or meal that, if you got really lucky, would reveal you won prizes like a new car, $100,000, even $1 million.
And people actually won. McDonald's even did a commercial showing some of the winners back in 1995.
But it turns out many of the people who handed in the $1 million and other big cash pieces didn't get them from buying fries at their local McDonald's. For over a decade, $24 million was stolen from the company by people who fraudulently played the Monopoly game.
It turns out the mob had obtained possession of McDonald's Monopoly big game pieces unbeknownst to the fast-food chain. It was finally revealed when an anonymous tip sent to the FBI offices in Jacksonville, Florida was looked into in the early 2000s.
HBO's six-part documentary series, "McMillions" (debuting Monday), uncovers how it all went down with shocking (and often hilarious) details from FBI agents, McDonald's executives, and some of the people who were in on the scam that was concocted by someone only known as "Uncle Jerry."
It's a too-good-to-be-true story that even its filmmakers, James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, still can't believe really happened.
It all began with some late-night reading on Reddit
In 2012, Hernandez was randomly scrolling through Reddit before going to bed one night when he came across a "Today I Learned" he found surprising: "TIL: Nobody ever really won the McDonald's Monopoly game."
Clicking the link that accompanied the factoid didn't give him much satisfaction, as it was a brief story that didn't give many details as to what happened. And a further search around the internet also didn't bear any fruit.
"In this day and age, if you can't find out every single detail about something on the internet it's mind blowing," Hernandez told Business Insider over the phone alongside Lazarte from the Sundance Film Festival, where the first three episodes of their series got their world premiere.
For a documentary filmmaker, the lack of information out there on a topic like this just begs to be made into a movie. And it began Hernandez's obsession with the Monopoly scandal.
At the time, Hernandez was making a living working behind the camera on TV, commercials, and making branded content, so during any free time he would fall back into the rabbit hole and search for any kind of leads to how the Monopoly game was compromised. He even put in a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain court records of what was uncovered in the FBI's investigation. Hernandez said it took over three years to finally get that information. But when he did, he received a treasure trove of insight.
HBO
The McDonald's Monopoly game.
It also revealed who the FBI agents in Jacksonville were who broke the case. And to Hernandez's surprise, they were willing to talk on camera."They were really excited about it because they had never been able to talk about it," Hernandez recalled. "They said, 'This is our favorite case.'"
By the summer of 2017, Hernandez had made incredible headway, but also realized he would need more help to pull off telling the story. So he called up Lazarte.
"James was convinced it was big, I was perhaps a little skeptical just because I didn't know what he knew [about the scandal]," Lazarte, whose background is as an editor, recalled of that first meeting with Hernandez. "We just started to discuss about if the characters are going to be strong enough for a movie. Is this story going to be captivating?"
Also, though the two knew each other over the years having worked in the same industry, they had never worked together on the same movie let alone directed together.
"We were surprised how easy of a fit it was," Lazarte said. "People would ask us, 'How long have you guys been working together?' And we were like, 'First time.'"
After getting past all those initial feeling-out steps between them, they got into mapping out how to tell this story. And what better way to start it than with what sparked the whole investigation for the FBI, a post-it with the question: "McDonald's Monopoly fraud?"
In search of 'Uncle Jerry' with the help of Mark Wahlberg
The "McMillions" story starts in 2001, when FBI agent Doug Mathews had just come on at the Jacksonville, Florida office.
When he got there, the "McDonald's Monopoly fraud?" post-it was stuck to the computer screen of his superior officer and Mathews couldn't get it out of his head. Finally one day, he asked what the post-it meant. Mathews was given the phone number of the person who sent in the initial tip. He called the number and was told that three of the people who had won the $1 million prize were all related and the mastermind behind the scheme was someone named "Uncle Jerry."
It wasn't very much to go on, but enough for Mathews to get his bosses to greenlight an investigation. And it's where Hernandez and Lazarte pick up the story.
"McMillions" is as hilarious as it is shocking. It's filled with incredible detail on everything from how the Monopoly pieces are made in a super-secure factory to how exactly the Mafia got its hands into the game. The series also highlights a bevy of colorful characters and scenarios (many filmed as reenactments) that can be best described as stranger-than-fiction (we won't give anything away, but the reveal of who "Uncle Jerry" actually is brings quite a shock).
Soon after teaming up and landing interviews with Mathews, other FBI agents, and building relationships with some of the "winners" to talk on camera, Hernandez and Lazarte realized they had hit a goldmine and pitched the story as a documentary series to Unrealistic Ideas, Mark Wahlberg's production company that focuses on unscripted projects. Soon after, HBO came on board, and those big players finally got the directors their final piece of the puzzle: McDonald's.
HBO
FBI special agent Doug Mathews.
"They were harder to get on board than the FBI," Hernandez said with a laugh of getting the chain's involvement.When Hernandez was working on the project by himself, he'd tried to get anyone from McDonald's to sit down and talk about the fraud and how they teamed with the FBI to bring the perpetrators to justice. But any reach-out was returned with a hard no. Finally, there was traction when Wahlberg and HBO joined the project.
"We approached them and said, 'The FBI told their part of the story and they are taking about you,' and we felt it was to their benefit to have their own voice be in there and not just be coming from the FBI," Lazarte said. "They didn't have to say anything to us, but I think they felt it was the right thing to do."
The result is a series that is destined to be must-see TV. And the directors are preparing even more insight on the scandal beyond the six episodes.
After each episodes airs on HBO, Hernandez and Lazarte said "The McMillions Podcast" will go live and will delve even deeper into what you just watched.
"There were pieces of great stories that we had to put on the cutting room floor and it got to the point where we felt it might be interesting to share these stories," Lazarte said of the podcast. "HBO got really behind it. Some of our subjects are interviewed and it will answer questions the audience might have."