Once again, suspicious minds in North Texas will be turning to the Cheaters team for the truth. The shamelessly trashy late-night “reality” show shot in Dallas is returning this fall.
Launched in 2000 by former Dallas attorney Bobby Goldstein, Cheaters has been around so long we all know its premise: Each episode features a “complainant” who catches a cheating loved one in the act and confronts them, with all the accompanying drama you can imagine.
Over the years, Cheaters has existed in many forms. There have been one-hour episodes, old footage has been reedited to fit a 30-minute format, 10-minute “Amazing Confrontations” episodes have aired and uncensored versions of the show have been offered on pay-per-view.
Is it for real? Well, probably not. More than one investigation has claimed that the drama is staged. And Dallasites know better than anyone what lies behind each individual episode. (Like countless others, this writer knows someone who was hired to act like a cheater on Cheaters.)
The show’s longest-running host, Joey Greco, picked up where its original captain Tommy Grand left off in 2002. In a scandalous twist, a boyfriend on the show allegedly stabbed Greco the following year. However, that incident — unsurprisingly — has also been called into question.
Later, Clark Gable III, grandson of the screen legend, took over for a few seasons before he died of a drug overdose in Dallas last year.
Just a couple months after Gable’s death, Cheaters was crowdfunding for another season, offering a signed photo of Gable, T-shirts and even an executive producer credit to anyone willing to invest in the show.
CORRECTION, Feb. 20, 2020 at 9:30 A.M.: This story has been updated to note that Bobby Goldstein is not a practicing attorney in Texas. He was disbarred in 2002. Additionally, a previous version of this story misidentified the person who allegedly stabbed Cheaters host Joey Greco. It was a boyfriend who was featured on the show, not Greco’s own boyfriend.