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British 'Millionaire' Cheats Found Guilty
« on: Apr 8th, 2003, 8:41am » |
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British 'Millionaire' Cheats Found Guilty
Mon, Apr 7, 2003 03:39 PM PDT
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Major Charles Ingram, his wife Diana, and college lecturer Tecwen Whittock were found guilty on Monday (April 7) of attempting to cheat the British quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" out of its one million pound ($1.6 million) top prize.
According to The New York Times the Ingram couple were sentenced to matching 18 month jail terms and Whittock was sentenced to 12 months. Those sentences were suspended. In addition to forfeiting the million quid prize, the trio was ordered to pay over $100,000 in legal costs and fines.
"You have now been shamed in the most public way and your reputations," Judge Geoffrey Revlin said as he issued passed sentence in the closely watched trial. "In this case, having regard to your positions in life, that must in itself be a severe punishment indeed."
In September 2001, Major Ingram won the show's ultimate prize, but he was never able to collect his winnings, as allegations almost immediately surfaced that he had been tipped to the correct answers by somebody in the audience coughing. Whittock, the head of business studies at Pontypridd College in south Wales, was the "fastest finger" contestant at the time and protested that his coughing was genuine and random.
"I am not at all sure that it was sheer greed that motivated this offense," says Judge Revlin. "I am sure all three of you were besotted with quiz programs and the ambition to be successful on a major television show."
The defendants, who were said in court to be financially troubled, left the halls of justice protesting their innocence.
Having been blocked since the scandal broke, footage from Ingram's "Millionaire" appearance will air tonight.
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