When the duped person sends off the rare winning stamp, the scammer disappears. Sometimes, a scammer will post an offer on Craigslist or a forum to collaborate with another person who has the Boardwalk stamp. Other people have resorted to unethical or illegal activity. But overall, he lost $26.38 and 14 hours of his life.

His only non-food prizes were four DVDs and some Snapfish Prints. He won 22 medium fries and a number of other food prizes. McDonald’s mailed back 98 of his 100 self-addressed envelopes. Although he didn’t get any food for his $117, he saved at least $81 when compared to ordering the cheapest item on McDonald’s menu (hash browns) to get 400 stamps. It set him back about $117 in postage and 10 hours of writing the letters. So according to the rules, Brandon Duncombe of Florida sent McDonald’s 100 handwritten letters (each with a self-addressed, stamped envelope) requesting four game stamps each, for a total of 400 game stamps. Otherwise, the sweepstakes might be deemed an illegal lottery. In order for the sweepstakes to be legal, no purchase is necessary. Then there’s the guy who tried to take advantage of a technicality. McDonald’s restaurants in Canada did the same thing. In 2011, over 120 McDonald’s restaurants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, accepted Monopoly money for a short time in exchange for a large order of fries. McDonald’s even helped a couple of times itself. Over the years, people have tried different schemes to beat the odds. The best odds for pocketing a cash prize with a set of Monopoly properties was 1 in 30 million if you got the brown Mediterranean Avenue, which would win you $1,000. The easiest one to find was the red Kentucky Avenue piece at 1 in 15 million with 40 winners of two plane tickets each. For example, in 2014, the odds of getting a blue Boardwalk game piece was 1 in 602 million for a $1 million prize paid out as $50,000 per year for 20 years. Finding that last property of the color you need usually has astronomical odds. It’s somewhat easy to get all but one property of the same color on the Monopoly board. The problem for players is that McDonald’s makes certain game pieces scarce. However, the Monopoly game board pieces hold out the tantalizing possibility of winning up to $1 million. After you subtract the food prizes, there’s about a 2.5 percent chance of winning a non-food instant prize, which ranges from a DVD to $100,000. However, almost 90 percent of the prizes are food prizes like fries. In 2014, for the McDonald’s in-store game, Business Insider calculated the odds of winning a prize at 25 percent. For the game board, you’ll win a prize if you collect all of the railroads or all of the Monopoly properties with the same color. The stamps show an instant prize or the equivalent of a space on the board of the famous Monopoly game. Since the 1980s, for a limited time each year, McDonald’s gives away a game piece with two stamps each time you purchase certain menu items. Maybe that’s why some people get creative when playing sweepstakes like the annual McDonald’s Monopoly game. To realize the dream of winning big in a lottery or sweepstakes, you have to beat almost insurmountable odds.

His crime ring collected top prizes worth a total of over $20 million before the FBI arrested them in 2001 and the scheme was finally stopped. But starting around 1995, one man who worked on the security team for Simon Marketing, Inc., which ran almost all of McDonald’s promotions, stole valuable game pieces from the promotions. Some people have tried to beat the odds legally. However, the odds of winning the top prize of $1 million are a whopping 1 in 602 million. In the McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes, the odds of winning a prize (mostly food prizes like fries) are about one in four. “That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.” - Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations” In A Nutshell

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