Drama wasn't unheard of for these shows, as there were accusations of the shows bringing in fake contestants to spice up the show (Hottie from Flavor of Love and her infamous chicken) and the contestants themselves would accuse each other of various things, as was par for the course for these types of things. One thing that did become kind of obvious was that VH1 was willing to bring on people who had visible issues. Some of them were fairly obvious, like Brittaney Starr from Rock of Love. She did and said things during her time on VH1 that honestly made a lot of people really sad for her since she clearly needed help if she wasn't a plant to drum up drama. I think what was most sad was a moment where she talked about being a former Olympic hopeful that went into porn and that she "didn't regret" her actions. Anywho, my point here is that clearly VH1 wasn't screening their applicants as well as they should, as it was clear that if these contestants weren't fake then they had some major issues.

Eventually this all led to Megan Wants a Millionaire, a dating competition featuring a former contestant from Rock of Love. The conceit of the show was that she wanted to become a rich wife and marry a millionaire, so the show brought together various wealthy men who would vie for her affections. While it was airing, the show was a good example of how cheesy the shows could get as it outright dealt in excesses. Something to note is that these episodes were all pre-recorded. Also, on a side note, one of the people on the show was almost certainly an actor - Joe the "Trust Fund Baby" has a Twitter feed that doesn't fit any of his personality from the show, which was a bumbling, naive, and effeminate rich kid.

Enter Canadian millionaire Ryan Jenkins. He was dubbed the "Smooth Operator", as all of the contestants were given nicknames of various types. For the first episode the audience attention pretty much focused on the luxuries that Megan enjoyed and the gifts the contestants could buy to earn her affections, as well as the various odd but seemingly harmless quirks that the contestants had. The episode ended with Ryan being picked first, which is seen as a sign of high favor by some fans. He was also picked for a solo date on the third episode, which was also the last because...

His wife was found dead.

On August 18, 2009 the body of model Jasmine Fiore was discovered, after being reported as missing on August 15. It was very, very clearly foul play as she was stuffed into a suitcase and almost all identifying features mutilated or otherwise destroyed to ensure that she couldn't be ID'd. I say almost because she still had her implants in, which have serial numbers on them that were used to confirm it was Fiore. Suspicion quickly turned to her husband, who was revealed to be Ryan. He was pretty much the only suspect at that point in time and would remain so, as he almost immediately went on the run once the body was discovered. I say almost because I don't think it was confirmed that he was on the run until the day after the body was discovered.

Police had questioned him on August 17 and Ryan had claimed that he was going to Canada to fix issues with his immigration. When the body was found the next day, the opinion of pretty much everyone was that he was trying to flee the country and get help from his rich family. What seemed to confirm this was that Ryan had showed up at the VH1 offices trying to get a check from his appearance on another show, I Love Money. More on that later. The police later found a car Ryan was driving at a marina and the engine was still warm, so he seemed to have taken off via water using a boat he owned. This was riveting to a lot of people because not only was he on a reality show but police seemed to be just a few steps behind him.

Reports also seemed to confirm that his family was trying to help him avoid justice, so I suppose this also appealed to people who didn't want someone to use wealth and connections to avoid jail time. Some people compared him toAndrew Luster, great-grandson of the founder of Max Factor. He'd been accused of multiple sexual assaults and used his wealth and power to flee to another country around 2003 (he was later caught by no other than Dog the Bounty Hunter - something that could warrant a write-up in and of itself), so people didn't want to see a similar scenario but this time involving murder.

Ryan Jenkins was found dead on August 23, 2009. He had hung himself in a motel room in British Columbia that had been rented a day or so earlier by an unknown woman in her twenties that was later revealed to be his half-sister, confirming that his family was helping him flee the authorities to one degree or another. He didn't leave a suicide note, but he did have a will on his computer dated to August 20, when he first checked into the motel. No one really knows what was going through his head, but the popular consensus has generally been that Ryan knew that the police were eventually going to catch up with him and that his family couldn't protect him forever. He knew that without any other suspects, he was also almost certainly going to be arrested and tried for his wife's murder.

Fallout

VH1 quickly removed MWAM from TV, which was met with mixed feelings from fans. They understood, but at the same time this was one of the better shows they had had put out in a while as far as spinoff dating shows went. This in turn caused some controversy as far as the fanbase goes, as there was some horror that people still wanted the show to run, a show that would depict Ryan in a positive light. They also removed the forums, wiping posts moments after they were made.

People thought that one of the reasons VH1 didn't want to air the show was because Ryan won. This was later disproven via one of the contestants, who posted the results of who won. Ryan was in the final three, though. Another popular belief was that Ryan won the season of I Love Money that he was in, which has never been confirmed.

What really impacted VH1 was the revelation that they did an extremely shoddy background check on Ryan. They quickly shifted the blame to the company they hired. The company they hired didn't do Canadian background checks and instead outsourced this to a company that told them that Ryan was clean. Why was this important?

Because he had a record for assaulting a woman in 2007, something that presumably would have kept him from appearing in the show. There was a whole lawsuit about this via the company hired by VH1 against the Canadian company, which the US company won.

VH1's claims didn't really hold water since people pointed out that the channel had brought in contestants with various legal issues that would've shown up with a background check. These were probably some of the first posts that VH1 deleted on their forum, to say the least. There was discussion about reality and game show background checks, where people said that a lot of things were pretty much ignored background-wise in order to create good TV drama.

VH1 also said that they weren't going to show the season of I Love Money where Ryan appeared.

Aftermath

An article written in 2020 pointed out that then and now, there's no one way of vetting people for reality shows. Of interest with this is that Megan says that she wanted to pick Ryan as the winner and that they'd been having a phone relationship, but that producers pushed her not to pick him because they saw his personality as fake, essentially saying that they saw huge red flags with him. Also of interest is that apparently this show was the reason he met Fiore, as he was so upset over not being picked that he went to Vegas, where he met and married Fiore.

In the wake of the murder scandal VH1 made the decision to end their contest reality shows in favor of what we now see as regular reality shows like Fantasia for Real. This was partly as a way of pacifying the angry crowd demanding why VH1 didn't do a better job vetting people, but also a way of getting rid of a show format that was definitely on a downward spiral. Many of their shows weren't pulling in the numbers like the earlier ones and the spinoffs were definitely getting less interesting with each incarnation.

While this whole thing did somewhat fade from public consciousness, it tends to get brought up by news outlets when there is an issue with vetting reality show contestants or a reality show star does something violent.

EDIT:

A bit of clarification of timeline:

Filming for this series took place in February 2009 and had entirely wrapped before the first episode had aired. While they were filming Megan was talking to Ryan on the phone and when he wasn't chosen, got upset and took off for Vegas. He met and married Fiore in March 2009, then killed her in August, which is when the TV show started airing.

So:

February 2009: Filming and the phone relationship. The relationship ends when he isn't picked.

March 2009: Ryan goes to Vegan and meets Fiore, who he quickly marries.

August 2009: The show begins airing. Ryan murders Fiore and goes on the run.