What Happened to John Leonard? Where the Man Who Sued Pepsi Is Now

In 1996, PepsiCo made an advert that would prove to be a terrible mistake and led to an outlandish lawsuit that is the subject of Netflix's new documentary, Pepsi, Where's My Jet?

At the time, Pepsi released a commercial that introduced a points-for-prizes scheme, a no doubt innocuous idea at first. If you saved Pepsi labels you would be able to redeem Pepsi-branded merchandise, such as a T-shirt for 75 points or a leather jacket for 1,450.

But one college student, John Leonard, was intrigued by the biggest prize PepsiCo's advert had to offer: An AV-8 Harrier II jump jet. The commercial stated that the plane was up for grabs for 7,000,000 points.

PepsiCo's mistake? It didn't put a disclaimer on the original advert to suggest that the offer was anything but genuine.

What Happened to John Leonard? Where the Man Who Sued Pepsi Is Now

At the time, PepsiCo thought it would be obvious that the offer in the commercial was a joke, but Leonard took the company at its word and made a bid to earn the number of points needed to get the jump jet prize.

At first, Leonard thought he could earn the points by buying the amount of Pepsi bottles he'd need to get the points, but the logistics to make that happen proved quite tricky.

That is, until he found a loophole in PepsiCo's scheme: Points could be purchased for 10 cents each, meaning he could pay $700,000 for a then $23 million jet.

Leonard turned to his friend Todd Hoffman for help, and the millionaire agreed to join the student in his bid to win the jet. Only when they did, PepsiCo refused to give them the prize and so they decided to take the case to court in 1999.

PepsiCo argued that the offer was clearly meant as a joke, Leonard claimed it was a breach of contract and fraud.

In the end, Leonard did not win the case as the judge presiding over it found that no reasonable person could see the offer as genuine, and that the advert did not constitute as a real offer.

Leonard, now 48, works as a park ranger for the National Park Services, and he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and children, according to the New York Post.

In an interview with The Guardian about the documentary, Leonard said the case was something he "wanted to keep it back there, as something funny that happened a long time ago," rather than bring it into the public eye again with a documentary. But, in the end, director Andrew Renzi felt like the right person to tell his and Hoffman's story.

Looking back on the lawsuit and if it was strange to revisit this time of his life, Leonard told the publication: "Over the years I've been sensitive to it, because even close people have said: 'Well, you're an opportunist.' Lawsuits like this end up being compared to the McDonald's hot coffee case, the kind of ambulance-chaser thing. And that hit me wrong.

"Looking back on it, it was opportunistic. Absolutely. But that's not always a negative thing. And back then I wholeheartedly thought that we were going to get the jet.

"What I struggle with today is how can I have really thought that I was going to get the jet? I'm 48 years old now, and I'm now looking back on it like: what kind of d***** were you, man?"