McDonald’s Monopoly Boardwalk Rare Piece Scam

As the popularity of McDonald’s Monopoly grows each year, the more people find ways to try to take advantage of people’s greed or their desperate financial situations. For those who decide to play McDonald’s Monopoly in 2014, it’s important to know and avoid the scams which have developed around the game. While many of these have been around as long as the game has been played, they continue to be relevant today.

The Boardwalk Scam

The Boardwalk scam is by far the most common McDonald’s Monopoly scam out there, and it gets its name since it’s usually perpetrated with the rare Boardwalk game piece. Although it most often occurs with Boardwalk, the same scam can take place with any of the rare property pieces.

What will happen is someone will announce they have found the rare Boardwalk piece, and they need the Park Place piece to claim the prize. They then ask if anyone with Park Place would be willing to split the the $1 million prize. Since the Park Place piece is common (1 in 11 chance of finding), practically everyone has it, and the person who says he has the Boardwalk piece will be flooded with offers from those willing to split the prize.

The big red flag here is that it doesn’t make any sense. The old adage of “if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is” was written for this scenario. Why would a person who has the rare piece be willing to give up $500,000 when they could find it at McDonald’s by buying less than $50 worth of food to get it on their own? Those perpetrating the fraud know if you are willing to believe something like this is actually available, there’s a good chance they will be able to scam you out of some of your hard earned money.

Once you contact them, they will begin to play on your greed or dire financial situation because they know that’s exactly what has brought you this far. Instead of splitting the prize, they will ask if you would be willing to buy the rare piece from them and claim the prize all to yourself. All they will ask is to be paid a small amount for the piece. If you ask why they would be willing to do this, they will come up with a story like they are going to through a divorce and they don’t want their spouse to get hold of it which would happen if they claimed the prize, or they are having IRS problems and need to keep the money hidden for this reason.

Once an excuse is given as to why the scammer needs to sell the piece rather than claim the prize, he’ll ask for a relatively small amount compared to the rare piece’s worth. For example, the fraudster may ask for $5000 to $10,000 for the Boardwalk piece. All you need to do is send the money, he’ll send you the piece and you’ll win $1 million. The only problem with this plan is that once you send the money, you’ll never get the piece and your money will disappear. In the past there have even been some fraudsters who have generated fake rare game piece photos to show people to convince them they really have the winning game piece.

The truth is that anyone claiming to have any of the rare McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces and is of need of a common piece to finish the property color is a liar. Anyone making this claim is trying to scam you in some way or another. Don’t let your greed or current financial situation get the better of you because the only one who is going to make money in these types of transactions are the ones who are perpetuating the scam.