Ticket Competitions 2024

[Lucy92]

Good luck if anyone did enter! 

[Lucy92]

Hoping someone here managed to get that one, was an awesome prize! 

[angelin]

I think they will announce tomorrow. I wonder if it’s still running. It would be a fantastic prize although it doesn’t say how often the transport takes you to

the festival and I can imagine the wardrobe dilemmas 😀 I think breakfast in bed would make up for it all though. 

[Lucy92]

5 minutes ago, angelin said:

I think they will announce tomorrow. I wonder if it’s still running. It would be a fantastic prize although it doesn’t say how often the transport takes you to

the festival and I can imagine the wardrobe dilemmas 😀 I think breakfast in bed would make up for it all though. 

Winner was notified before 2pm today 

[angelin]

Ah no call 

[angelin]

And I hope it’s none of their mates

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

1 hour ago, angelin said:

And I hope it’s none of their mates

 

One of my younger brother's childhood mates ended up living in Switzerland and teaching golf to rich execs. One exec one day told him to enter a competition in a car magazine to win a car. This man owned the magazine. So, my brother's mate put in an entry, and miraculously he won the car.

 

It does very much happen, is all I'm saying.

[Lucy92]

26 minutes ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

 

One of my younger brother's childhood mates ended up living in Switzerland and teaching golf to rich execs. One exec one day told him to enter a competition in a car magazine to win a car. This man owned the magazine. So, my brother's mate put in an entry, and miraculously he won the car.

 

It does very much happen, is all I'm saying.

Hopefully not. It raised a lot of money for the charity in any case 

[angelin]

Yes I know someone who’s friend worked for a Magazine and they all won holidays and everything. 
 

they did email me today to say make sure you are following us on Instagram that was it though

[Cream Soda]

22 minutes ago, angelin said:

they did email me today to say make sure you are following us on Instagram that was it though

I saw that..not sure how they would even know if they are doing the draw on the crowdfunder site.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

59 minutes ago, angelin said:

Yes I know someone who’s friend worked for a Magazine and they all won holidays and everything. 
 

 

I also knew someone who worked as a journalist for a newspaper which often ran competitions. A mutual friend was in need of a new double bed, which the newspaper was at that time  running a competition for a new double bed. Needless to say, that person won the double bed.

[Lucy92]

1 hour ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

 

I also knew someone who worked as a journalist for a newspaper which often ran competitions. A mutual friend was in need of a new double bed, which the newspaper was at that time  running a competition for a new double bed. Needless to say, that person won the double bed.

That’s awful! 

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

20 minutes ago, Lucy92 said:

That’s awful! 

 

It is, indeed, very shoddy.

[angelin]

You would think in this day of everything computerised it wouldnt happen.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

1 hour ago, angelin said:

You would think in this day of everything computerised it wouldnt happen.

 

Having computers and (supposedly) robust systems in place does not guarantee a successful fair competition. eg.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55218398

[Alvoram]

16 minutes ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

 

Having computers and (supposedly) robust systems in place does not guarantee a successful fair competition. eg.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55218398

This all reminds me of the massive McDonalds Monopoly scandal in the US. 

Bloke basically got away with stealing millions in prizes from the competition in the end, because he whistle blew on his bosses who were keeping Canadian customers from winning entirely, ensuring the prizes go to US citizens, and long before he started stealing the top prizes.... Think he got 30 something months in the end. 

Quote

 

Fraud

 

In 2001, the U.S. promotion was halted after fraud was uncovered. A subcontracting company, Simon Marketing (then a subsidiary of Cyrk), which had been hired by McDonald's to organize and promote the game, failed to recognize a flaw in its procedures. Simon's chief of security Jerome P. Jacobson ("Uncle Jerry"), a former police officer, stole the most valuable game pieces.[23][24] Jacobson justified his long-running multimillion-dollar crime as his reaction to Simon executives having rerun randomized draws to ensure that high-level prizes went to areas in the United States rather than Canada, although he did not take the stolen pieces to Canada.[24] He began stealing winning game pieces after a supplier mistakenly provided him a sheet of the anti-tamper seals needed to securely conduct the legitimate transfer of winning pieces. Jacobson first offered the game pieces to friends and family but eventually began selling them to Gennaro "Jerry" Colombo of the Colombo crime family, whom he had met by chance at the Atlanta airport.[25] Colombo would then recruit people to act as contest winners in exchange for half of the winnings.[23][24]

 

In 1995, Colombo appeared in a nationally televised McDonald's commercial promoting his (fraudulent) win of a Dodge Viper.[26] In 1995, St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, received an anonymous letter with a Dallas, Texas, postmark that contained a $1 million winning game piece. Although game rules prohibited the transfer of prizes, McDonald's awarded the $1 million as a donation to the hospital, making the final $50,000 annuity payment in 2014.[27][28] Investigations later revealed that Jacobson had admitted to sending the winning piece to the hospital.[29] In June 1996, Colombo's father-in-law William "Buddy" Fisher came forward as a winner with a stolen $1 million Monopoly piece.[30] After Colombo died in a 1998 traffic "accident", Jacobson found new accomplices to help him sell the stolen game pieces.[25]

 

Jacobson's associates and those of his collaborators won almost all of the top prizes, including cash and cars, between 1995 and 2000, including McDonald's giveaways outside of the Monopoly promotion.[31] The associates netted over $24 million. While the fraud appeared to have been perpetrated by only one key employee of the promotion company, and not by the company's management, eight people were originally arrested,[32][33] soon growing to 21 indicted people, including members of the Colombo crime family.[34] By the end of the criminal prosecutions, 53 people were indicted, of whom 48 pled guilty: 46 in pretrial plea agreements and two who changed their pleas from not guilty to guilty during their trials.[27]

 

McDonald's severed its relationship with Simon Marketing and each company filed lawsuits against the other for breach of contract that were eventually settled out of court. The case brought forth by McDonald's was dismissed but Simon received $16.6 million.[35][36] Four of the putative winners convicted of fraud had their convictions reversed on appeal on grounds of a constitutional violation, as they did not know Jacobson and thus did not know that the winning game pieces were necessarily stolen.[37][38]

 

Jacobson pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida, and served three years in federal prison. The trial began on September 10, 2001, but was overshadowed in the media by the September 11 attacks that occurred the next day.

 

In August 2018, 20th Century Fox announced plans for a film based on the Jacobson fraud, with Ben Affleck attached as director, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese as writers and Matt Damon in an acting role.[39][40] While there have been no further updates on the plans for the film, the controversy is depicted in the 2020 HBO docuseries McMillions.[41]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_Monopoly

Edited June 23 by Alvoram

[Cream Soda]

Still no update on the crowdfunder site and no word on social media about a winner...

[Mand3]

I would HOPE as it's for charity it's been done fairly. It doesn't encourage donations in the future if it isn't. 

 

But then again how would we know?! 😂

 

It was still a small chance 1/145.

 

I do hope it's not scammy 🤞. A lot of that going on. 

 

 

 

[Cream Soda]

Winner just announced by email

[angelin]

Yes lucky her!

[Mand3]

7 minutes ago, angelin said:

Yes lucky her!

Congratulations to the winner! 🥳🏆 

 

What a prize! 

[Mand3]

Just now, Mand3 said:

Congratulations to the winner! 🥳🏆 

 

What a prize! 

Gutted it wasn't me 😪😂

[angelin]

Yes I will look forward to seeing it on the Instagram. Very lucky I wonder how many she bought?

[Lucy92]

I couldn’t see her in their followers, but could be under a different name. What a prize! 

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

16 hours ago, Alvoram said:

This all reminds me of the massive McDonalds Monopoly scandal in the US. 

Bloke basically got away with stealing millions in prizes from the competition in the end, because he whistle blew on his bosses who were keeping Canadian customers from winning entirely, ensuring the prizes go to US citizens, and long before he started stealing the top prizes.... Think he got 30 something months in the end. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_Monopoly

 

I had heard about that before, but hadn't read up on it.

 

This is worth a watch, if you like reading about / viewing people who get up to nefarious activities;