The cheating on CNBC's "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge" was so blatant that anyone with even the tiniest knowledge of the stock market could have sensed that something was seriously wrong.

BusinessWeek points out that the top finalists in the contest averaged returns of 45% during the first nine days of the final round which stretched out annually would equal 1,200%. The odds of someone being able to generate these sorts of results legitimately are pretty slim. Having more than one contestant show these returns should have immediately set off alarm bells at the General Electric Co.- (NYSE: GE) owned network.

This wasn't a difficult flaw to exploit. The magazine reports that all these wannabe Warren Buffetts did was go the CNBC Web site and hold off executing the trades until after the 4 p.m. close by keeping their Web browsers opened. They wound up getting the pre-close price for stocks that went up in after-hours trading.

CNBC, which is offering $1 million to the first-prize winner, denies that the controversy surrounding the contest has damaged its credibility. "Why would it?" said Kevin Goldman, a spokesman for CNBC in an interview, adding the company launched an investigation as soon as the problems were brought to its attention though BusinessWeek said whistleblower Jim Kraber was initially rebuffed. He declined to release the names of the parties CNBC has hired to ferret out these miscreants.

The "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge" was a successful promotion that helped make CNBC.com of the top business news sites fairly quickly. Whether the cable channel is too clever for its own good remains to be seen.