How Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? con-artists swindled show of £5MILLION in bigger cheat scandal than infamous Ingrams
CHEATING Major Charles and Diana Ingram will always be remembered as the villainous duo who swindled their way to the jackpot on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
But The Sun can reveal that two other contestants — Keith Burgess and Paddy Spooner — were behind an even bigger scam which saw them con the game show out of £5MILLION.
And the overall cost to the producers could have been tens of millions as their organisation was one of EIGHT “syndicates” which had infiltrated the ITV favourite.
In return for at least a 25 per cent cut of winnings, the quiz obsessives manipulated the show’s phone line application process to help hundreds of people get on the show — then provided the answers on the Phone-A-Friend round.
On upcoming ITV drama Quiz, Spooner — played by actor Jerry Killick — is seen admitting his shadowy “consortium” was behind ten per cent of the show’s £50million winnings.
It revisits the story of the cheating Ingrams, but reveals how a bigger band of con artists performed a cheat which dwarfed the couple’s win.
Speaking for the first time, Burgess said: “Our story is a bigger story than the Major. Ours was the biggest operation. But there was no consortium, it was just me and Paddy.
‘I got five fellas on the show within an hour’
“We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just helping people get on the show. The Ingrams cheated so ridiculously, though, and Charles didn’t know anything at all.
“I started off little. I got two guys on and one of them only made £8,000, from which I took my share.
“Then me and Paddy met as contestants on the Irish Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And he’s smarter than me — another level.
“Then I remember one day I sat in a room with five fellas and I got them all on the show within an hour.”
From the moment Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? aired in September 1998, it was a TV phenomenon, and by March of the next year, it recorded its highest ever audience — 19.2million viewers, or a third of the UK’s then population.
But with so much money up for grabs it quickly attracted con artists, most famously Major Charles and Diana. The pair hit the jackpot in 2001 with the help of an accomplice in the audience, Tecwen Whittock, who coughed when the right answers were read out.
In 2003 all three were convicted of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception.
But Quiz, which airs next week, asks whether they were as guilty as they seemed.
Starring Matthew Macfadyen and Sian Clifford as the Ingrams and Michael Sheen as quiz host Chris Tarrant, the drama also shows how the syndicates exploit the programme’s flaws.
Paddy, 53, of Bournemouth, and Keith, 63, of Dungannon in Northern Ireland, were both former contestants on the UK show and versions in Ireland and Australia.
They devised a way to manipulate the applications system which was done on premium-rate phone lines.
Wannabe contestants — who the pair often found by trawling other quiz shows — rang the game show hundreds of times to register their interest on a recording system.
Then when the producers called them back, the cheaters got a friend or relative to pretend they weren’t in, and asked them to ring them again at a certain time. This meant Spooner or Burgess had breathing space to ready a list of answers to a relatively small number of questions which producers asked the applicants on rotation.
Burgess said: “I told them, ‘Do a divert on your phone to another number and come and meet me’, then Millionaire ring. They’ve got different questions but I was ready for them.”
Then when the hopefuls got on the show, either Burgess or Spooner would become their Phone-A-Friend lifeline contact. They would then use a “data room” full of fact-filled papers and bring together a team of quiz experts with the right answers.
The scam took off after the duo met in 2002 and, although Burgess refuses to say how much he made, it turned into a lucrative business.
He said: “I’m driving around in a Jaguar car, not having worked for four or five years. So I went to see an accountant and he actually VAT-registered me, and he must have registered me as a business.”
But in 2007, Burgess revealed his operation in a Sunday newspaper sting. In secret recordings he was heard saying he had helped 200 people get on the show – including one who had scooped the jackpot.
He also claims in the recordings that he took between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of their winnings.
When the cheating became public, Burgess says he checked with the Met Police whether he would be investigated for a crime. He said: “They weren’t interested.”
In fact, far from being vilified like the Ingrams, Burgess found he was applauded.
He said: “After that story appeared in the paper, which effectively brought it all to a halt, I walked down to the village and this car drove past, beeping the horn, and this fella put his thumb up.
“It was the priest, laughing, like, ‘Hey you turned them over there’.”
But Burgess acknowledges that his organisation was not the only one operating in the UK.
He said: “I know another syndicate formed — a spin-off of us by somebody we put on the show. They stole the idea from us.
“I told Paddy at the time, ‘This fella’s dangerous because he’s got time on his hands, like we have’.”
Paul Smith, the boss of Celador, which produced the game show, says he became aware of the syndicate operations but struggled to combat their tactics.
He said: “I recall us knowing there were between six and eight syndicates operating in different parts of the country. And we knew who the key members were — Keith was one, Paddy was another.
“They are as bad as the Ingrams. I’m certain that without these syndicates, the Ingrams wouldn’t have existed.”
‘Nobody got murdered but they were guilty’
“Did we ever think there were a group of people sitting in a room combining their general knowledge and using certain data to access the answer to a question? No we didn’t. Yes, we were naive.”
Paul worked with James Graham, the writer of Quiz, and last year agreed to meet Spooner as part of a fact-finding mission for the drama. It was then that he confirmed his syndicate — which he called The Consortium — was behind securing winnings of £5million. He said: “I hunted down Paddy and went to meet with him. I came to his home and went out for lunch and he was very friendly.
“And he provided all this information, including an element in the drama which is his data room where he had all the information.
“I came back to James and said, ‘Here is a picture which Paddy’s given me of the data stuck to his walls in his apartment’. And James said, ‘We’ve got to include it’.”
The show’s original run with Chris Tarrant as host ended in 2014. But it came back in 2018 to mark its 20th anniversary with a short run hosted by Jeremy Clarkson. It is soon to return again with a celebrity special. Despite the fact the game show survived the scamming, Paul points out that the show’s jackpots might not be so easy to fund now the producers have been forced to scrap the premium phone lines, which the cheats abused.
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And though the syndicates were his enemies, there is one thing he and their members agree on — the Ingrams were guilty.
Paul said: “There’s nothing revealed in the drama that alters the facts as far as I’m concerned.
“Does it paint them in a different light? No, not really.
“In the grand scheme of things nobody was murdered — it’s only a TV show — but that doesn’t stop them being guilty.”
COULD YOU BE A MILLIONAIRE?
CAN you answer Charles Ingram’s questions WITHOUT cheating? Have a go.
£100: On which of these would you air laundry?
A: Clothes dog, B: Clothes horse, C: Clothes rabbit, D: Clothes pig
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