The world's first TV game show, Spelling Bee, hit airwaves and screens in 1938. Since then, game shows have enthralled millions around the globe, with viewers hooked by the wit of hosts, the talent (or luck, in some cases) of contestants, and the glittering prizes on offer. But they're not always the light-hearted entertainment that they seem to be. Tempted by the prospect of winning, a handful of contestants have tried to cheat their way to the jackpot instead of playing fair. Read on to discover the five biggest game show cheats of all time and how they were caught. 

Most game show cheats don’t admit that they’ve cheated – but Herb Stempel became a whistleblower when he exposed the fraudulent nature of American quiz show Twenty-One. A clerk for the United States Post Office, Stempel had appeared on several radio quiz shows in his formative years before applying to take part on Twenty-One in 1956. During his application, he answered 251 of the 363 questions correctly, which he claimed was a record score. A few weeks later, producer Dan Enright came to him with a proposition.  

According to Stempel, Enright asked him: “How would you like to make $25,000?” In today’s money, that’s the equivalent of over $252,000. Enright's meaning was clear: he didn’t want Stempel to win money via partaking in the show itself. Rather, he wanted to pay him to make a memorable appearance that would help to boost Twenty-One's ailing ratings. 

Stempel was coached on everything from the delivery of his answers to his appearance. Enright picked out his outfit and told him to appear humble, which included addressing the quizmaster as ‘Mr Barry’ instead of using his first name, Jack. Stempel became an overnight celebrity and racked up $69,500 over the course of six weeks – the equivalent of $700,902 in 2021. But as the show’s ratings began to drop again, Enright decided that Stempel’s orchestrated winning streak should come to an end. And for that, he needed a suitable opponent... 

Enter Charles Van Doren (pictured right), an English professor from Columbia University. The producers of Twenty-One convinced Van Doren that his appearance on the show would help to ‘glamorize’ higher education, so he agreed to go along with the hoax. Van Doren would face Stempel in several shows, with the opponents battling it out for the top prize of $100,000 (more than $1 million today), but from the beginning the outcome of the series was fixed.  

The rivalry between Stempel and Van Doren became a national talking point. However, while the public eagerly waited to see who would win the quiz, the producers already knew. Stempel had signed a document agreeing that when the producers asked him to lose, he would do so. 

True to his word, he incorrectly answered the question "What motion picture won the Academy Award for 1955?", despite knowing that the right answer was Marty, which just so happened to be his favorite film. With around 15 million viewers tuned in, Van Doren won the quiz – and with it $129,000 ($1.08 million in 2021). 

After his appearance on Twenty-One, Van Doren was pictured on the cover of Time and went on to work for NBC. But his TV career was short-lived: the network dropped him in 1958, after Herb Stempel and a couple of other Twenty-One contestants publicly denounced the show as a hoax. The US Congress called on Van Doren to testify against Twenty-One. Although he initially denied any involvement, he eventually admitted that he was "involved, deeply involved" in the fraud. He spent the rest of his life as an editor and writer, and refused to talk about the quiz show. The scandal was immortalized in the 1994 film Quiz Show.

It wasn’t just Twenty-One that caught the attention of the US Congress. In fact, so many shocking revelations were made about quiz shows during the 1950s that they’re now collectively referred to as ‘the 1950s quiz show scandals’. One such show was Dotto, which combined general knowledge questions with connect-the-dot puzzles.  

In May 1958, Edward Hilgemeier Jr., a stand-by contestant for Dotto, found a notebook while he was waiting backstage. The notebook belonged to Marie Winn (pictured), a contestant who was playing the game show at that very moment. To Hilgemeier’s astonishment, he realized that the book contained the same answers that Winn was delivering on stage. After Winn had won the show, he showed the notebook to Winn’s opponent Yaffe Kimball-Slatin, and together they confronted the producers. 

The producers of Dotto reportedly bribed Hilgemeier, Winn, and Kimball to keep quiet about the deception. But as more and more game show contestants came forward with accusations, Hilgemeier decided to break his silence. He showed the notebook to CBS and the network quickly launched an investigation. After analyzing Winn’s notebook and her answers on the show, which host Jack Narz described as “a little too pat”, they decided that Dotto was a fix. The show was canceled in August 1958, after eight months of airtime.

Like Van Doren, Winn (pictured in 2009) went on to become a writer. In 1977, she even wrote a book about the dangers of TV – but neglected to mention her role in one of the most high-profile TV scandals of the 1950s.  

Patrick Quinn scooped $58,600 on the game show Super Password in 1988. While his winnings included a record-breaking $55,000 jackpot, he soon hit the headlines for very different reasons. Why? Patrick Quinn wasn’t who he said he was. He was actually Kerry Dee Ketchem – a fugitive wanted in Alaska, Indiana, and Ohio for theft and insurance fraud.  

A bank manager in Alaska soon recognized Ketchem, who had used the name of an old college professor for his TV debut. When Ketchem arrived to collect his game show winnings, he was swiftly arrested by police and sentenced to five years in prison. One of his convictions was for faking the death of his wife, who had no idea that her husband was profiting from her $100,000 life insurance policy. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Ketchum had applied to appear on Super Password because he wanted “to use [his] own intellect for something other than bad.” His TV appearance turned out to be not such a smart move.  

In perhaps the most infamous example of game show cheating of all time, Charles Ingram, a former British Army major, won a whopping £1 million ($1.35m) on the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001.Despite his shaky general knowledge in the first few rounds, Ingram scraped through, answering 15 questions correctly to bag the ultimate prize. But producers soon grew suspicious.  

When host Chris Tarrant (pictured) went to join Charles and his wife Diana for a glass of celebratory champagne after the show, he overheard the couple arguing. Even more incriminatingly, the team that reviewed the footage noticed a correlation between Ingram’s answers and coughs from a waiting contestant called Tecwen Whittock. At one point, Diana herself had a coughing fit that coincided with Ingram steering away from a wrong answer before choosing the right one.  

Based on all the evidence, the producers decided not to give the million to Ingram and instead reported their suspicions to the police. After a long trial at Southwark Crown Court, Charles, Diana, and Whittock were all convicted of "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception". All three maintain their innocence, but in 2003 the Ingrams were also found guilty of insurance fraud. The couple were given a conditional discharge on the grounds that their financial state was "dire".

Now discover the biggest Jeopardy! winners of all time