McMillions

So, I walk into my room and my wife has already fallen asleep.  The TV is on, as usual and of course I find myself watching what she left on.  At first, I had no idea what I was watching.  There were these various interviews with FBI agents, old men in different locations and then executives from McDonalds.  Then I realized what I was watching.

There once was a time when McDonald’s ran contests such as Monopoly and other games to increase sales by getting more customers to come into the stores and have a chance to win money and prizes.  For the customers it was a simple concept, come in, buy a burger and fries or whatever else you wanted and play the games that were attached to the wrappers, food boxes and drinks.  If you’re like me you probably assume nobody ever wins the millions of dollars.  Maybe a free shake, happy meal or apple pie.  Well, apparently people did win.  Not only did they win they won a lot and almost all of them were tied to the same guy and conspiracy.

This 6-part series dives deep into the entire story of the McDonald’s game scam of the late 90’s and early 2000’s.  The perspectives are great from the FBI agents, contestants, recruiters, lawyers involved for both prosecution and defense and the many family members, employees and others who were all effected by essentially one man’s scam.

This was really interesting as I love a good true crime story retold by everyone involved.  It really paints the picture so well.  The combination of greed, stupidity and the effects it caused on so many innocent people that lost jobs, relationships and much more.

I would totally recommend watching this series as a nice change of pace from the fictional stories we typically watch.