'McMillions': How a Reddit Thread Sparked a Docuseries About the FBI's "Favorite Case"
"I thought they were playing a prank on me," McMillions co-director James Lee Hernandez says of the first time the FBI set him up to talk with Doug Matthews, the larger-than-life special agent who became the breakout star of HBO's six-part docuseries on the McDonald's Monopoly game scam. "The second he walked in the room, it was like the cannons blared and the heavens crumbled and I was like, 'All right, we've got something here.' " The scam, which ran from 1995 until it was busted in 2001, started when Jerry Jacobson — security director for the marketing company running the promotion for McDonald's — rigged the game by giving out perhaps 60 winning peel-off stickers to people he knew, who would then give him a cut of the prize money.