Charles Ingram

Okay, that makes more sense. I suppose it can be considered stealing on a very large scale. 

Sorry to bump this thread, but since it seems there's a lot of questions, I'll shed some light.

First, the plan wasn't devised until after the first taping. Playing by himself, Ingram was struggling, as he had already used two lifelines after the first 7 questions. After he won the £4,000, time was called, and over the break the plan was created between the 3 of them. When he came back for the next day of taping on September 10th, he had the £8,000 question, and from that point on he was almost entirely assisted by Whittock.

First, someone asked how would Whittock know all the answers? The truth is that he didn't. Whittock didn't know the £16,000 question about Emmental cheese (although Charles knew it, so he didnt entirely need the help). And he did not know the £32,000 Craig David question, and that is why Diana had to cough instead. Whittock was also caught on tape asking the FFF contestant sitting next to him the answer to the £250,000 (Anthony Eden) question and the £1,000,000 (Googol) question.

But don't get me wrong, I don't condone cheating at all. But this was actually a genius, but horribly executed plan. Charles would often rule out answers entirely only to end up choosing them as his final answer. He didn't appear to be under much pressure, and he would constantly say "I'm not sure" before every single question. He would also run by every single answer choice as many as 4 times, just making it blatantly obvious that something was up. And don't even get me started on the £500,000 question. The Cough! NO just gave it away and apparently in court, the jury laughed when they heard it. So even though they made it all the way, it was just so obvious.

If they wanted to get away with it, they should have done the following:

1) Have more than one accomplise. Since Diana was on cameras it couldn't have been her, but if they were wise they would've added an extra accomplise to do the coughing. It was pretty obvious who it was coming from with one person, but if they had two, it would be much harder to catch on to their plan. One of them could have coughed on even numbered questions and the other on odd, and if the assigned person didn't know, they wouldn't answer as Charles ran through the questions the first time. The first accomplise would then send a subtle gesture to the 2nd that it was up to him.

2) Don't rule out any answers. Charles' downfall was that he kept saying "I'm not sure" and "I don't think it's this." Instead of saying something like "I don't think it's a nanomole, I don't think it's a gigabit, I don't think it's a megatron. I really do think it's a googol," he should have said "Nanomole..........Gigabit.........Megatron........,Googol." If he would just read off the answers without making any personal comments on every question, then this would simply look like his way of working through the question. And after hearing the cough on the first time through, he could just zero in on that answer. He would also appear more intelligent, and he would avoid any last second changes like "Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Paris final answer," that were ultimately his downfall.

3) Have a much more complicated code. They may not even have needed to cough when he announced the correct answer, as after Chris Tarrant read the question, Whittock could have coughed once for A, twice for B, thrice for C, or be silent for D. What they also could have done was coughed when Charles announced the answer that was either diagonal or adjacent to the correct answer. Again, that would make it much harder to detect than coughing 4 times when he announced the right answer.

4) Have Whittock and Diana cough the entire show. Make them cough before the game started, have them cough in between questions, and Whittock should have been coughing when he was in the Hot Seat. Even if they went to trial, it would have been much harder to convict them if they were all coughing the entire show, as it was more likely that it would be mere coincidence that the coughs and the right answer were connected together.

5) Stop after £125,000. The Ingram's already had £50,000 in debt, so they needed the money. However, Whittock and Ingrram got too greedy and pushed the envelope (you can Diana facepalming in the audience as this happens). If they stopped after question 12, they only had a few questions that were suspicious and the producers themselves said that he would've gotten away with it if they stopped there. It's a shame to see greed take over and lead people to their downfalls.

So they were caught, because but if they had been smarter and done any of the other 5, they just might have gotten away with it.


Now, since it was clear that they were cheating, they rightfully got convicted of deception in April 2003. Charles and Diana got an 18 month suspended sentence and Whittock got a 12 month suspended sentence. The Ingram's also had to pay a £115,000 fine, and they obviously did not get the money. Both Charles and Diana declared bankruptcy in 2004/2005, and Charles is unable to find work because of the scandal. He also was discharged from the Army after he was convicted. And yes, the two are still together, but they've gotten a lot of harassment from neighbors over the scandal, and Charles had a freak accident in 2010 where he almost sliced off 3 toes while working in his garden. The two of them also appeared on other game shows (as noted earlier in the thread), and Charles actually wrote 2 novels in 2006 and 2007. I think I heard somewhere that his first sold 2,000 copies. Today, Diana runs a jewelry shop and Charles occasionally helps out, as that is pretty much the only thing he has been able to do after the scandal. I'm not sure what happened to Whittock though.

Hope this sheds a lot of light, I read about this and ended up watching Major Fraud about 3 times.

I could argue that he legitimately won £16,000, but it gets harder to argue in his favour when you get up to the £32,000 question, and much much MUCH harder at the £500,000 question.

1) Chris Tarrant incorrectly noted in Who Wants to Steal a Million that in almost every question he faced, his first instinct was wrong. This was simply not the case; it was happening only half the time, specifically at the £32,000, £500,000, and £1 million questions.

2) Charles was very very VERY close to picking A1 for £32,000, and would have likely picked it had he not heard Diana cough twice. Everyone was waiting for Tecwen to cough at that point, but he didn't at all, as he likely didn't know the answer.

3) After winning the £32,000, he proceeded to pick the correct answers right off the gun for the next three questions, getting up the ladder seemingly effortlessly.

4) It took a noseblow from Tecwen to get Charles to think about steering away from Berlin. Then Charles briefly hung around nanomole before confirming googol for £1m four different times.

It was noted that Charles could have gotten away with walking with £250,000; I would agree with this statement. The £500,000 level is where it becomes by far the most obvious that he was cheating. I don't think anyone under normal circumstances would have tried to answer that question if they didn't know it. Even if I knew that Baron Haussmann was French, I might not have been confident enough to deduce that he must have planned a city in France.

How soon are you supposing? All the evidence they had going into break just before revealing the answer to the £32,000 question was four coughs at the most, two of which came from Diana Ingram, not Tecwen Whittock. Do you think they would have been confident enough to lay the conviction then?

The coughs do become much more frequent from then on, of course. But even then, for a good while, his instinct is always correct. And besides, if they do know he's cheating, they won't need to stop taping because they know they won't have to fork over the money. The only time they would need to go into break is when they know that Charles's run has come to an end, presumably for a consensus meeting on how to play off the next part of the show and/or how they handle the prize money that was "won".

 The quote from the guy in charge behind the scenes was "we can't stop the show and accuse of guy of cheating on gut instinct." He would later call Charles to tell him that he lost the million. Another said "we have to maintain that this is a genuine win until we know otherwise." But obviously, he was rightfully caught.

Whoa! Great find, FinalAnswer19!