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It was the winter of 2014, and Sue Duncan and her husband Leo Fisher were settling in for a quiet night at home. Sue had a chicken roasting in the oven, and Leo was reading on his recliner. Then, the doorbell rang. Leo opened the door to find a man in a long black jacket at his doorstep. The man fired a Taser at Leo\u2019s chest and barged into the couple\u2019s home. The man said he was with the \u201cVirginia SEC,\u201d and that he was there to arrest Leo. Right away, Sue sensed she didn\u2019t have the full story.
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\nThen, in the mid-90\u2019s, Pepsi launched a new ad campaign. It was pretty simple. Every time you bought a Pepsi, you earned points. With those points, you could buy items from the Pepsi catalogue. To advertise Pepsi Points, Pepsi aired a commercial aimed at showing off all of their sweet swag. You could buy a t-shirt. A leather jacket. And, as a funny little twist, they ended the commercial by saying that Pepsi drinkers could buy a Harrier jet for 7,000,000 points. It was clearly a joke. At the time, Harrier jets were worth $33.8 million. Plus, they were only available for military use. But you know who didn\u2019t think they were joking? A 21-year-old business student named John Leonard.
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\nAnd now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.
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\nIn this episode, Kristin pulled from:
\nThe commercial itself, which is available on YouTube
\nLeonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp. 2d 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)
\n\u201cPepsi Harrier Giveaway,\u201d Snopes.com
\nJohn Leonard, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Pepsico, Inc., Defendant-appellee, 210 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2000)
\n\u201cPentagon: \u2018Pepsi ad not the real thing.\u2019\u201d CNN.com
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\nIn this episode, Brandi pulled from:
\n\u201cA Home Invasion, A Torture Session, One Lawyer Nearly Killing Another\u2014The Gruesome November Night in One of Washington\u2019s Wealthiest Suburbs.\u201d by Jason Fagone, The Washingtonian
\n\u201cEx-Lawyer Sentenced to 45 Years in Home Invasion, Torture Attack of Former Boss, His Wife\u201d by David Culver, NBC Washington