![]() ![]() This made the trial and sentencing of Jerome and his co-conspirators a footnote in the papers that was quickly forgotten as it ended September 10th. The livelihoods of hundreds of former Simon Marketing employees and their families were affected at the beginning of a large economic downturn, punctuated by the September 11 th terrorist attacks. Many people who did nothing wrong were collateral damage and lost their jobs. This led to the eventual closing of Simon Marketing. Philip Morris, who was one of their other large customers, also terminated their contract. According to Forbes, their contract with Simon Marketing was immediately terminated. More importantly, the credibility of McDonald’s, one of the most prevalent and valuable brands in the world, was seriously damaged. When they were done investigating, they found a network of 24 people that had profited illegally from his theft. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.Īn anonymous caller to the FBI tipped them off to “Uncle Jerry” in 2000. ![]() One of the $1 million winning pieces was anonymously sent to St. He was pocketing the winning game pieces, and selling them to the highest bidder, sometimes getting as much as $50,000. However, from 1995 to 2000, this game was anything but fair. From all outward appearances, he appeared to be diligent, effective and focused on delivering a fair game to customers. He appeared to be doing very well, and put security theater in place, such as checking the shoes of employees to make sure that they were not stealing game pieces. He did so well at this that job that Simon hired him to oversee security for the $500 million McDonald’s account. He started off as a security auditor for Dittler Brothers in 1981, which was the printer for the game pieces ordered by the agency overseeing the promotion, Simon Marketing. An insider threat, Jerome Jacobson, who was a former Hollywood, FL, police officer, was the ringleader of a scam that sold those winning game pieces that numerous people were clamoring for. ![]() This was an early example of crowdsourcing via the Internet. McDonald’s made sure that pieces to get big prizes were hard to find, so collaborating meant a better chance of getting them. This was all fueled by the dream of getting the $1 million piece, or winning a vacation, car, or large cash prize. When this game came around, it filled mailbox quotas quickly as numerous people submitted status reports of what pieces they had, and what they needed to get the various big prizes. Email became the weapon of choice amongst friends and acquaintances to organize and attempt to pool together pieces to win the larger prizes, instead of just getting the free Big Mac or Diet Coke. McDonald’s had an annual Monopoly game every year, where there was one million-dollar prize, and numerous other smaller prizes that were achieved by assembling blocks of game pieces. Nascent crowdsourcing over email for Monopoly pieces This was especially true during March Madness, when tournament brackets would swamp email before Yahoo! Sports and started their online ones. With the email quotas of college email systems in the 1990s, this meant that you would often fill your quota quickly and sometimes your friends got the dreaded delivery failure message because your mailbox was full. AOL users were infamous for hitting the “Reply All” button, quoting entire messages, and saying “me too.” With some of the older email clients like Pine, this led to very uncomfortable scrolling as you had to scroll past numerous levels of one-line or one-word responses before you got to the actual message, which was buried in a series of “>” quote symbols. Before Facebook, WhatsApp or texting, epic email and USENET threads were the main ways of communication. One of the first uses of the nascent internet in the 1990s was to bring people together via email. ![]()
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