That pissed me off a bit. This documentary spends a lot of time setting this guy up as some creepy weirdo evil guy who somehow cheated away the network’s money, up until the very last part.
I mean sure, the guy was weird, but the only thing he did was actually learn the game. It’s no more cheating than knowing winning and losing patterns in a chess game and choosing the right next move.
He did embellish his background to get into the show but that’s about it and I am sure he’s not the first to do that.
The problem isn’t the contestant, but your buddy with the remote in the audience. I’m sure they have some precautions against fraud, like no cell reception and a strict policy on electronic devices.
The really interesting question is: why wouldn’t the smart person go on the hot seat instead and just win the million genuinely? It’s not a real advantage to have an idiot bloke sitting there and get the right answers by coughing or other means to him, if you actually know the answers.
I’m 53 minutes into the doc. This guy was a terrible bluffer. He’d fixate on an answer for a few minutes, but when he heard a cough signalling another one, he would very quickly say he was sure it was that one. Even his reasoning for his guesses before he was tipped off to the answer were awful.
IIRC he had a friend in the audience who would cough when he would verbally say the correct answer, so he would go through the choices and when he got to the correct letter he would listen for a cough and then choose it. They made it extremely far until they got too greedy and kept going after they had planned to stop, they got caught shortly after making it near the million.
Also his friend did not know an answer to one of the questions so the friend asked someone next to him for the answer. The contestant was awkwardly stalling for time and going back and forth randomly on the questions. he did the same thing for many of the questions i think then ‘magically’ got the right answer each time.
Was not too clear but i hope this helps
