An army major, his wife and a college teacher were convicted Monday of using “coded coughs” to win the jackpot on Britain’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
Charles Ingram maintained that luck, military training and strategy had helped him answer the $1.55 million question–“A number 1 followed by 100 zeros is known by what name?”
But prosecutors said college professor Tecwen Whittock used a system involving coded coughs from his seat in the audience to guide Ingram to the correct multiple-choice response: a googol.
The jury found 39-year-old Ingram, his wife Diana, 39, and Whittock, 53, guilty of deception in trying to win the contest.
Judge Geoffrey Rivlin upbraided the defendants for a “shabby schoolboy trick.”
But he spared them jail terms, giving them suspended sentences of a year to 18 months because they had been “shamed in the most public way and your reputations ruined.”
