FBI place Monopoly Man under protective custody

PAWTUCKET, R.I. – The Federal Bureau of Investigations announced it has placed Milburn Pennybags, more commonly known as the Monopoly Man, into federal protective custody after the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the suspected shooter in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The extra protective measures for the money hungry real estate mogul were granted after several pieces of evidence against Mangione suggested there might be a tie to Monopoly, the popular capitalism game for which Pennybags is known.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the FBI has moved Mr. Pennybags and his ludicrous amount of money he earned exploiting the working class, to a secure location until a time we feel confident any perceived or actual threat against him is resolved,” said Mary Erickson, spokesman for the FBI.

To date, police have discovered a stockpile of Monopoly money in the backpack Mangione allegedly dumped in Central Park after assassinating Thompson. He was also arrested at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania; Altoona is famously known as the home of the Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the purchasable spots on a Monopoly game board and McDonalds has run a Monopoly-themed sales promotion since 1987.

“Look, I’m not usually one to attach myself to conspiracy theories, but the kid is an Ivy League valedictorian, I don’t think any of this is a coincidence,” said Sheila Franco, a concerned citizen who’s been watching this case closely ever since her mother’s chemo medications were deemed ‘unnecessary’ by her healthcare provider. “Going to jail is part of the game of Monopoly. He was found with a manifesto and the potential murder weapon on him. Even the dumbest criminals don’t walk around with the murder weapon; they ditch that shit immediately. I think something bigger is going on here.”

Despite her claims against being a conspiracy theorist, Franco excitedly unveiled a massive collection of news clippings and photographs pinned to the wall and connected with red string during our interview. She then went on a 45-minute tirade about the connection between the address on Mangione’s fake driver’s license and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1908, the correlation between the Pokémon in his Twitter bio banner and Proverb 28:6 which reads, “better is a poor man who walks with his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways,” and the possibility of typos in his manifesto being an old pirate code waiting to be translated.

“The most interesting part is, however, the Monopoly angle,” said Franco, showing absolutely no sign of stopping. “Mangione said he’s working alone, but Monopoly is a multiplayer game. So, who else is playing? If the goal of the game is to be the last person standing in the capitalistic hellscape you’ve conquered, does that mean other CEOs are a part of this game? Does he have accomplices who’ll help overthrow the bourgeoisie? There’s a game afoot my dear Watson, the question is, who will be the next piece to fall?”

From the safety of his FBI safehouse, Pennybags condoned Mangione’s alleged actions against the economic elite.

“This scallywag aims to disrupt the balance of power in our nation without any forethought of how this petty behavior will have a disastrous ripple effect across the globe,” said Pennybags. “We cannot continue to put this criminal on a pedestal or else the peasants will begin to wake up from the socio-economic anesthesia we’ve meticulously put them under for all these years.”

Not to sound entirely like a James Bond villain, Pennybags admitted there is some wiggle room for improvement in the income gap between CEOs and a company’s lowest paid employees.

“Are we going to start paying people a livable wage? Ha! Of course not,” said Pennybags. “But we can create the illusion of financial independence by admitting our mistake and raising our minimum wage by a few cents on the dollar. As for the medical aspect of this ridiculous situation, I suppose it wouldn’t kill us if we accepted, oh, let’s say one percent more claims. That should keep those filthy plebians content for a while.”

And while many silver-spoon executives around the country are reluctantly willing to temporarily slash their personal wealth by one-to-two percent if it means avoiding an assassin using personalized embroidered bullets to murder them to the cheers of the commonfolk, most people say that isn’t going to be enough.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” said Dan Figeroa, a self-proclaimed Mangione stan. “Those are the unalienable rights our founding fathers said every American is due. But these bozos sitting in their ivory towers think they can take that shit away from us. Uh, uh, no way. We ain’t gonna stand for this shit anymore. It’s time to toss the tea in the harbor and take back this country for the people once again.”

Mangione has been charged with five counts in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested: forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of a crime, and giving false identification to law enforcement. He was also charged with murder in New York.

*Editor’s note: this is an ongoing story, make sure to follow Alpine 6 Action News for updates.*