How Did the Crazy "Balloon Boy" Dad Get on Wife Swap?

As just about everyone knows by now, Richard and Mayumi Heene appeared with their three boys on the ABC reality series Wife Swap twice [2] before launching last week’s crazy Balloon Boy hoax. They’re not the only reality TV personalities to have come undone lately: In August, Ryan Jenkins, of the dating show Megan Wants a Millionaire, was accused of killing [3] his swimsuit model ex-wife, and later that month, host DJ AM died of an overdose after filming the addiction intervention show Gone Too Far. How thoroughly were these unstable reality TV cast members vetted before they appeared on air?

It varies by program. At MTV, the outside production companies that churn out the shows are charged with vetting potential cast members. Those production companies, in turn, often farm out background checks to outside firms. Depending on who conducts them, checks can vary in quality and depth. For a game show, a cursory criminal background check typically suffices. But for shows featuring heightened emotional and physical interactions, like picking a spouse or being stranded together in a far-flung locale, network lawyers will often insist on a full investigation of potential reality cast members.

In those full checks, contestants first are asked to fill out detailed questionnaires about their pasts. Those answers are cross-checked against records found in public databases in an attempt to develop a full list of former residences. Investigators are then sent out to those locations to examine court records and interview family and friends. There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States, and record-keeping can vary widely among them. Investigators must be aware of those differences. In some jurisdictions, domestic violence is handled in family court, so a check of criminal records alone is not enough to get a full picture of a person’s past. Investigators also watch for signs of anger-management issues that could again flare up during filming.

Various producers and networks have differing levels of tolerance for risk, so drunk-driving charges, bankruptcies, messy divorces, nonviolent misdemeanors, or other blemishes on a person’s record are not automatic disqualifiers. Some producers simply want to have an idea of a person’s background so they later are not blindsided and forced to stop taping or pull the program from the air.

The vetting isn’t foolproof, of course. The background check performed on Jenkins, a contestant on VH1’s Megan Wants a Millionaire and I Love Money 3, failed to find that he spent 15 months on probation for an assault in his hometown of Calgary, Canada. 51 Minds, the production company behind both shows, maintained [4] that it had a “thorough vetting process” in place, even if it failed to reveal Jenkins’ criminal past.

While most energy is spent vetting potential contestants, reality TV hosts also have checkered pasts that can be worth exploring before the complications disrupt their shows. On Sunday, a New York Times article explored the possibility that former drug addict Adam Goldstein, who used the stage name DJ AM, died [5] in August of an overdose as a direct result of filming the series Gone Too Far. In that series, which debuted on Oct. 12 after MTV secured his family’s permission, Goldstein, 36, counseled others about their addictions, hoping to inspire them to clean up, as he did at 25. Instead, exposed again to needles and crack pipes, he fell back into the abyss of drug addiction himself.

DJ AM, Jenkins, and the Heenes have company on the erratic front. In 2000, the Smoking Gun revealed [6] that Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire groom Rick Rockwell had assaulted an ex-fiancee in 1991 and was not really a millionaire at all. Brian Randone, a former contestant on The Sexiest Bachelor in America, was arrested [7] in his ex-porn star girlfriend’s September slaying.

A call to RDF USA, the producers of Wife Swap, regarding the company’s procedure for screening the families who appear on the show, was not returned by press time. But no vetting process could have predicted that Richard and Mayumi Heene’s desire for celebrity was so great that they would fake their own son’s disappearance in a homemade silver helium balloon.

DoubleX thanks Elaine Carey, senior vice president and national director of investigations for Control Risks, a risk-assessment company.