The Password Is Fraud: All-Time Champ Arrested

The biggest winner in the history of TV’s “Password” game show was arrested on fraud charges Thursday when he unsuccessfully tried to pick up his $58,000 prize check, authorities said.

Kerry Ketchem, 36, made four appearances on the show under the alias Patrick Quinn and was arrested at Mark Goodson Productions’ Los Angeles office after a viewer in Anchorage, Alaska, recognized him as a fugitive in a credit card fraud case, said Secret Service official Ron Williams.

Ketchem, who once was fired as a sheriff’s deputy in Ohio, was being held at the Los Angeles Police Department lockup and was to be arraigned before a federal magistrate, said Williams, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Secret Service.

Specifics of all the charges against Ketchem were not immediately available, but Williams said he was also wanted on an Indiana State Police fraud warrant and was arrested for investigation of “false identification and credit card violations.”

“He bought a BMW vehicle under a fictitious name utilizing fictitious identification and drove away with it,” Williams alleged. “It was recovered in North Pole, Alaska.”

Ketchem, who apparently lived most recently in the San Bernardino area, also was wanted in Anchorage, Williams said. “He did about $25,000 worth of fraud on credit cards under the name Patrick Quinn” in Alaska, Williams said. He alleged that Ketchem had used the Quinn alias on fraudulent credit card applications.

“The guy’s a real flim-flam artist . . . who perpetrates frauds all over the country,” Williams said.

Posing as a government employee named Patrick Quinn, Ketchem was a contestant on the NBC game show in Burbank last Friday and again on Monday through Wednesday. He was the biggest winner in the history of the show, with a total take of $58,000, said Jerry Chester, executive vice president of Mark Goodson Productions in New York.

Williams said he didn’t know which Alaskan bank issued the cards but said the bank called Ketchem’s mother in Indiana, trying to locate the man. Ketchem apparently heard from his mother that he was being sought, then called Goodson’s Sunset Boulevard offices “and said he needed to pick up his check because the government was sending him out of the country,” Williams added.

Chester said “Quinn” asked to pick up his money Thursday, and at Secret Service request, two agents stood by to arrest him.

“He acknowledged who he was and acknowledges he perpetrated the credit card fraud in Anchorage,” Williams said.

Chester said that when “Quinn” showed up Thursday morning, he told Goodson officials, “I need the $58,000 to pay for a lawyer.” “We did not give him the check,” Chester said. “NBC (which pays the prize money) is still going to make a decision as to whether they intend to pay him.”