Wild Trailer for Six-Part HBO Doc McMILLIONS About the McDonald's Monopoly Scheme
“This story has got everything - revenge, drugs, greed… Ronald McDonald.”
Did you ever play the McDonald’s Monopoly game? I know I did. I didn’t really get too into it, but if I won a free order of fries or a drink, I was pretty stoked. And I think I remember my friends and I commenting on the fact that we never saw any commercials or news reports about anyone ever winning the big cash prizes, but it was a fleeting thought that I didn’t really revisit or dwell on, until now.
HBO is bringing us a crazy six-part documentary called McMillions that tells the inside story about the man who scammed the whole system and took all the major prizes for himself and his friends. Never heard of this scandal? That’s because the trial began on September 10, 2001, the day before the world turned upside down. But now we have all the information, and this documentary looks fascinating.
Here’s the synopsis:
This six-part documentary series examines the $24 million-dollar McDonald’s Monopoly game fraud, chasing the mysterious mastermind behind the scam and the intrepid and dedicated team of FBI agents on his trail. For over a decade, McDonald’s awarded prizes in its Monopoly promotional game tie-in, unaware that the winning tickets for prizes worth $25,000 and up were being stolen and sold to undeserving winners. An anonymous tip to the FBI in 2001 sets off a far-reaching chain of events that will come to include dogged and unorthodox investigative work, undercover sting operations and dirty dealings by ex-cons and mafia mobsters. This fast-paced documentary series unfolds with suspense as it unravels the twisted threads of the fast-food fraud and reveals the real-life characters who got away with stealing from Ronald McDonald and the FBI agents who pursued them.
The doc will premiere at Sundance in a few weeks, then it will hit HBO on February 3rd. Check out the trailer below, and let us know if you’re interested.