Names and faces
■ Forty-game winner Amy Schneider capped her big year by winning a hard-fought “Jeopardy!” tournament of champions in an episode that aired Monday. Schneider, a writer from Oakland, Calif., won three games in the finals, narrowly beating Andrew He, a software developer from San Francisco, who won two games. The third contestant, Sam Buttrey, was another Californian, who won one game. Schneider had a 40-game winning streak earlier this year, the second-longest in the show’s history, which began when she defeated He. She said she both wanted to compete again with He, known for his cold-blooded big bets on the Daily Doubles, and feared him.
“He was definitely someone that I knew could beat me because he very nearly did before, and he did a couple of times here as well,” Schneider said. “Any of the three of us really could have won if a very small number of things had gone differently.” Schneider led He by $1,400 going into Final Jeopardy, where the prompt was: “The Jan. 12, 1864, Washington Evening Star reported on a performance of this ‘dashing comedy’ to ‘a full and delighted house.’” The correct response: “What is ‘Our American Cousin?’” Schneider and He both answered correctly, but Schneider made the bigger bet. She won the $250,000 grand prize, He won $100,000 for second place and Buttrey won $50,000. On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.
■ Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms after being convicted earlier this year on charges including bank fraud and tax evasion. U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta on Monday gave Todd Chrisley 12 years in prison and Julie Chrisley got seven years, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta. Each is to serve three years supervised release afterward, and Ross also ordered them to pay restitution in an amount to be determined later. The Chrisleys gained fame with their show “Chrisley Knows Best” (2014-’22), which followed their tight-knit, boisterous family. Federal prosecutors said the couple engaged in an extensive bank fraud scheme and then hid their wealth from tax authorities while flaunting a lavish lifestyle. “The Chrisleys have built an empire based on the lie that their wealth came from dedication and hard work,” prosecutors wrote in a pre-sentencing court filing. “The jury’s unanimous verdict sets the record straight: Todd and Julie Chrisley are career swindlers who have made a living by jumping from one fraud scheme to another, lying to banks, stiffing vendors, and evading taxes at every corner.”