VH1 pulled Megan Wants a Millionaire after contestant Ryan Jenkins became the prime suspect in Jasmine Fiore’s murder, exposing a disastrous screening failure.
On August 16, 2009, VH1 aired an episode of Megan Wants a Millionaire in which contestant Ryan Jenkins tried to turn a tiny dog into a business empire. He smiled, flirted and pitched a rotating pet-food dish while competing for reality star Megan Hauserman. To anyone watching, he was still another carefully packaged television “millionaire.”
What viewers could not have known was that the body of Jasmine Fiore had been discovered one day earlier, stuffed inside a suitcase and discarded in a Buena Park trash bin. Jenkins would soon become the prime suspect in her killing. Three days after the episode aired, VH1 stopped the show. Before the week was over, the scandal had become an international manhunt.
A Millionaire With a Past
Megan Wants a Millionaire was peak 2000s VH1: 17 supposedly wealthy bachelors competing for a reality star who openly wanted the trophy-wife lifestyle. Hauserman had already appeared on Beauty and the Geek, Rock of Love and I Love Money, making the series another branch of the network’s sprawling reality-TV universe.
Jenkins arrived as a 32-year-old Canadian real estate executive, billed as an investment banker worth $2.5 million. His confidence carried him deep into the competition. After filming, he met Fiore in Las Vegas and married her within days. The marriage was later annulled, but their relationship continued. Jenkins allegedly struck her at a hotel in April and was charged with domestic battery in June.
The Crime Happened Before Episode Three Aired
Fiore, a 28-year-old model, was last seen alive on August 13 after traveling with Jenkins to a hotel near San Diego. Jenkins checked out alone the following morning. On August 15, a man collecting recyclables discovered a bloodstained suitcase containing her body.
She had been beaten and strangled. Her fingers and teeth had been removed, apparently to obstruct identification, and investigators ultimately identified her through the serial number on a breast implant. Jenkins reported her missing later that day and then headed north.
VH1’s third episode aired Sunday as police assembled the case. Jenkins was named a person of interest on Tuesday, and the network suspended future broadcasts on Wednesday. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder on August 20. After allegedly crossing into Canada by speedboat, Jenkins was found dead by suicide at a motel in Hope, British Columbia, three days later. He never stood trial.
Pulling Megan Wants a Millionaire solved only half of the network’s problem. After finishing the dating series, Jenkins had been invited onto I Love Money 3, a competition populated by returning personalities from VH1’s reality franchises. That season had already been filmed in Mexico—and Jenkins had won the $250,000 competition.
Removing him through editing was impossible when the entire season led to his victory. On August 24, VH1 officially canceled both programs, burying the remaining episodes of Megan Wants a Millionaire and a completed season of I Love Money. Months of production disappeared because the central figure could no longer be presented as a mischievous reality-TV villain.
The Background Check That Found Nothing
The most troubling revelation concerned a warning that existed long before Fiore entered Jenkins’s life. He had previously pleaded guilty in Canada to assaulting a former girlfriend. In 2007, he received 15 months of probation, 80 hours of community service and orders to complete domestic-violence and sex-addiction counseling. Producers said he would never have been cast had they known.
Responsibility passed through several companies. VH1 licensed the series from 51 Minds Entertainment, which relied on Collective Intelligence for screening. Jenkins’s Canadian search was then subcontracted to Straightline International. The report came back clean.
The initial explanation blamed incorrect information from a Canadian court clerk. Collective Intelligence later sued Straightline, alleging that it had not performed the expected Royal Canadian Mounted Police database search. Straightline eventually agreed to an $810,000 settlement. Years later, 51 Minds co-founder Mark Cronin said VH1 demanded $12 million from his company for the lost programming.
A background investigation cannot predict every violent act, and Jenkins reportedly displayed no violence while filming either series. That argument offered little comfort. The process had not failed to anticipate an unknowable future; it had missed a directly relevant assault conviction and then allowed the same contestant into a second pressure-heavy production.
VH1 could remove the episodes and sacrifice an entire completed season. It could not undo the fact that a contestant with a documented history of violence had passed through its machinery twice. Jasmine Fiore’s murder permanently transformed the series from disposable reality television into a case study in what can happen when casting moves faster than scrutiny.