Do people really cheat?

I've been accused of cheating in blitz by a couple people over the years after we play a few games. I never really understood it. I assume cheating means using a cpu program to make moves. Why would someone spend the time to do that? Yes, they're rating would go up but what's the point as it's not even them playing? I feel like the folks that accuse cheating just prefer that explaination than they were just beaten and are actual saddly delusional thinking there is a conspiracy of people out there that spend their time using cpu's to play speed chess, but then again, it may be an actual problem. Does anyone have any real examples/evidence of cheaters out there?

http://www.chess.com/groups/forum/cheating-forum

I have given up playing online because at least four times I lost games where when I analysed with an engine afterwards every move of my opponent once we left the book were the number one choice of Rybka/ Houdini (one game all the moves were played by Fritz). This was four out of about 30 games so not everybody does it by any means but I would really rather not take the chance. Now I just use the great learning tools on this site and pontificate in the forums.

haha - love the end of your comment - pontificate away! wow, that's fairly compelling actually. 4/30 games suspected of cheating. i can see a couple moves coinciding with Fritz, but all of them is very suspicious indeed. I play a bunch of speed chess, so I'd be really bummed if ~15% of my games were bogus, so in that sense, I hope your data is off. Either way, WHY would someone do that? It just doesn't make any sense to me. And, I play people who are something like +/-100pts of my rating so around 1400-1600. That's not even that good...! If you're going to cheat, wouldn't you want to end up with a good rating? Are they intentionally losing some so they can stay believable? It's psychotic in a way...