Prosecutors charged him with fraud, alleging that he, his wife (a former “Millionaire” contestant herself), and a fellow contestant in the audience devised a system of coughs to feed Ingram answers. Unfortunately for Ingram, he had more than luck on his side. After burning two lifelines and struggling through seven low-value questions to win £4,000 in his first day’s taping, Ingram correctly answered the next eight high-value questions, including the million-pound question, with only one 50/50 lifeline to help him-a 32,768-to-1 shot if guessing randomly. As the ITV documentary “Major Fraud” explained, Ingram appeared on the original British version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in September 2001.
While the other participants in this list merely suffered embarrassing moments on camera, Charles Ingram’s game show infamy landed him in jail.