I've been watching this show and the actual lesson is how this Doug Mathews guy thinks he's the hero of this story, but is clearly the definition of the worst aspects of the FBI.
Mathews says he was assigned to investigate Medicare fraud in Florida but was super bored by it, desperate to find another case to pursue.
He saw a yellow sticky on a colleague's computer about McDonald's potentially having fraud in the Monopoly game, and jumped to pursue a "sexier" case, ultimately getting dozens if not hundreds of agents to join in.
It was a HUGE undertaking over YEARS (do I mention in the leadup to 9/11? Nah that's a cheap shot) to track down all these dime store con artists and single moms
At the end of the day, they indicted around 50 people for stealing about 32 million dollars worth of stuff from McDonald's. Good for you, Doug!
Except... your actual assignment was Medicare fraud.
Medicare fraud costs American taxpayers roughly 50 billion dollars. Each. Year.
And sometimes that's a good year.
So congratulations to Doug Mathews! You got to wear a gold suit and do ridiculous undercover work to catch a bunch of randos stealing from a fast food company with an FBI investigation that definitely cost more than they stole.
Heckuva job, Doug
Postscript: Marwan Alshehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Mohamed Atta were all in Jacksonville at the same time Doug Mathews had the whole Jacksonville FBI super psyched about the Monopoly case.
Nah, he has better taste.
Doug Mathews still works for the FBI.
