'Cheaters' caught cheating (transcript)

I have a confession: This summer, I had a brief, torrid affair with "Cheaters." Somehow I have never seen this 10-year-old syndicated mainstay before. I stumbled onto "Cheaters" during one of its weekend marathons on G4 and couldn't stop watching. For weeks. The 100% mock-sympathetic smarm of Joey Grecco, the shame-faced busted guys, the irate busted girls (the busted guys usually looked guilty, the caught girls usually got mad -- it's your fault I did this). It seemed like the logical conclusion to what reality TV is -- what gotcha moment can be more riveting than somebody literally being caught with their pants down?

I was pretty sure at least some of it was staged. One Texas apartment complex seemed to be used over and over again. Some of the reactions felt off. And the whole twisted endeavor seemed just too entertaining to be true. Didn't care.

Now here comes "Inside Edition" finding two cases where "Cheaters," well, cheated. A couple says they were paid to pretend to cheat. And the show's most famous clip, where Grecco was supposedly stabbed, was said to be staged. Here's excepts from tonight's transcript:

Wyatt says, "They asked us to sit next to the windows, ham it up a little bit, be flirty and touchy, to kiss a couple of times, but we never did, we just faked it."

Carl Burmeister says he was paid to play Wyatt's lover and that the entire episode was shot at the home of one of the show's producers. The program also claimed that the cheaters were under surveillance for three weeks, but Burmeister says that in reality it was all shot in just two days.

Wyatt, although under the legal drinking age at the time of the taping, told INSIDE EDITION she was given alcohol in an attempt to loosen her up for the romantic scenes.

...

But the best-known episode of Cheaters, the episode that put the show on the TV map, is the episode where host Joey Greco gets stabbed by an irate man caught cheating.

"So none of it was true?

"No," says Cassandra Terrazas, a Dallas hotel receptionist who says she was paid $350 for a few days work playing a woman who is caught having an affair with the man.

She was told the confrontation would take place on a lake located near Dallas. "It was all set up," she says. "They just rented a boat for us and we were supposed to be out like we were fishing and I was supposed to be sunbathing, and then they were going to come up on another boat and catch us."

...

The young man was immediately restrained, and Greco, blood gushing from his wound, was rushed back to shore where paramedics fought to save his life.

A police car sped away, and the viewer is led to believe the knife-wielding cheater has been arrested and taken to the Rowlett Police Station.

But according to the police in Rowlett, Texas, that never happened. "There were no arrests at all during that time period for that type of crime," says John Ellison of the Rowlett Police Department.

According to Cassandra Terrazas the ambulance was rented, the blood was fake, and everything was scripted right down to the person who fell off the boat.

But when Meagher told Executive Producer Bobby Goldstein what our investigation found, he still insisted it was all real.

Meagher: "The whole thing was faked, wasn't it?"

Goldstein: "No".

Meagher: "We have two people, on the record, directly involved in the scenario, who have told us everything was faked."

Goldstein: "That's a surprise to me, and that is the first I've ever heard that. It was represented to me that this incident actually occurred."

Meagher: "You represent in that episode that the young man was arrested and taken away by the Rowlett Police Department."

Goldstein: "I think so."

Meagher: "It never happened."

Goldstein: "I don't know that to be so."

Meagher: "Did you visit him in the hospital?"

Goldstein: "I think I did."

Meagher: "What hospital did he go to?"

Goldstein: "Matt, I don't remember all this. But I can't agree with you that it didn't happen."

Meagher: "If the host of my television show was stabbed and I visited him in the hospital, I would remember."

Goldstein: "Listen, I visited Joey. My recollection is that he was very pale, very frail, very scared, but he was very courageous. But let me say this, if it was all poppycock, it sure did great in the ratings."

Full transcript here.