There are interesting allegations that contestants in the CNBC Million Dollar portfolio contest may have been cheating…? taking advantage of a security hole in the contest website to place after hours trades.? The amusing thing is that the cheaters have basically done the same thing Wall Street did back during the mutual fund late trading scandal…

More amusing to me is the description of the guy who found that the leaders were cheating…

…the 42-year-old was spending 12 hours a day on the contest, using three computers in his Greenwich Village apartment to trade 1,600 different portfolios, all in an effort to win the $1 million grand prize. He even dropped his studies for the chartered financial analyst (CFA) exam, given once a year, so he could have more time for the financial news channel’s game.

He was taking advantage of a “feature” of the contest that you could have as many trading portfolios (and entries in the contest) as you wanted to…

Of course those of us with programming experience thought about gaming the system with an automated program, but sometimes life is too short to chase a contest like this…