Huge fine for Richard and Judy phone scam

The Richard & Judy television phone-in scandal reached its conclusion yesterday when the competition telephone operator employed by Channel 4 was fined a record £150,000.

Eckoh UK, the company in charge of the You Say, We Pay call-ins for the daytime talk show, was given the heaviest fine yet by Icstis, the premium-call watchdog. The telephone services regulator said the programme "seriously misled" viewers and ordered Eckoh to refund those affected.

Five million viewers paid £1 per call, but almost half of those calls were received after the shortlist of winners had been decided. The competition was cancelled in February. The chairman of Icstis, Sir Alistair Graham, said: "Winners were being chosen before the competition closing deadline, while millions of additional viewers were still encouraged to phone in and pay to enter the competition, but were denied the opportunity of fair consideration."

Cactus TV, the producers of the talk show featuring Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan, had hired Eckoh to run telephone competitions for the programme. But Channel 4 said the mistake lay with Eckoh.

Anne Bulford, the finance director at Channel 4, said: "Eckoh had a responsibility to speak to us if there were problems, but they never did. We engaged Eckoh in good faith as a reputable and experienced service provider, so we were very shocked that a senior person in the company knew about it as early as June 2006."

Despite distancing themselves from the event, Channel 4 have since introduced their own watchdog to keep tabs on the competitions they still run, a service that was not in place when the mistakes happened. Now Icstis have ordered that Ofcom should conduct its own investigations.

But Eckoh's director, Harry Chathli, said his company had already changed its practices, and the ruling was just being used as a warning for other companies.

"Because of this we can't help but feel that we've been made a scapegoat," he said, "and we will be considering an appeal once we have seen the result of the Ofcom investigation." Ms Bulford said the fine was "significant", but "commensurate with the breach made ". Channel 4 has promised to refund those who were not entered in the contests, and to donate profits made from the phone-in error to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.