From 2012 until 2020, police allege Shane Maree Hatton stole $818,642.80 from Owen, transferring his cash to herself in 334 transactions ranging from $27.65 to $4668.

Court documents have shown the extent of an alleged fraud waged over eight years by the bookkeeper of the famous Wright family, with Owen being stiffed for almost a million bucks as he struggled to overcome a mysterious brain injury.

From 2012 until 2020, police allege Shane Maree Hatton stole $818,642.80 from Owen, transferring his cash to herself in 334 transactions ranging from $27.65 to $4668.

Tyler was hit for $586,805.07, in 295 transactions ranging from $21 to $4675.

Mikey copped $151,201.23 in 63 transactions ranging from $40 to $3538.55.

Their mum and Dad, Rob and Fiona, lost $81,025.29.

Police claim Hatton, who was a family friend of the Wrights as well as bookkeeper for the dad’s plumbing biz and for the kids’ surf multi-million dollar sponsor gravy, has indicated she was responsible for the fraud. 

“The defendant did make admissions to the offences,” police allege in the bail acknowledgment document tendered to the court. “Police have records of all transactions and the accused has shown remorse towards the victims after the commission of the (alleged) offences.”

The records were presented to the court in a swollen paper ream box containing more than fifteen hundred pages. 

Police say there is little chance of the money being recovered, however.

Three quarters of the $1.6 mill was put into the pokies, although three hundred k of it, say the police, “was wasted.”

Back to court for Hatton on June 21. 

Gotta know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em. And a bear always follows a bull… 

In a secret off-market deal, the two-time runner-up to the world surfing title and, for a time, the tour’s perennial number four, Taj Burrow, has sold his beachfront villa in Mackenzies Bay, Sydney, for $3.94 million, a lil more than the $2.3 he paid in 2014.

It ain’t a bad play.

House prices in Sydney have gone beyond anything experienced historically, almost doubling in TB’s case in less than a decade.

And, a bear always follows a bull.

The joint is a top-floor three-bedroom duplex circa 1950s that overlooks the area’s best wave, an imperfect left off the northern headland at low-tide and a squishy little rip bowl right near the shore at high tide.

Taj knows real estate.

He’s been buying hunks his whole career. He knows it as a wonderful store of value. His Mackenzies Bay three-bedder, with garage, last traded at $493,000 in 1988 and $185,000 in 1986. The investment banker owner, David Sutherland, had tried to offload it in 2010 for two-and-a-half mill but didn’t get any bites.

Taj scooped it up four years later for 200 gees less. Smart buy? Of course.

He then rented it at $1500 per week.

Taj’s latest buy is the eleven acres of bucolic loveliness fifteen minutes from Yallingup’s white-sand beaches and unforgiving reefs. he swooped on in his home town, Yallingup, an area still undervalued in comparison to the rest of the country, I think.

The property, bought in November for a million dollars, was marketed as the “perfect blank canvas for your new dream home.” 

Burrow’s principal residence, of course, is the award-winning “nautilus shell” house in Wardanup Crescent, Yalls, aka “millionaire’s row” by architect Dane Richardson. The property was bought for two-milll in 2004 and the new place was built in 2011, winning the overall Design Excellence Award at the 2012 Building Designers Australia WA.

Neighbours still recall, fondly, the demolition of the old place.

“He had a pretty nice place before, but he knocked that one down. He had a demolition party and everyone came around with sledgehammers and knocked the walls down,” neighbour Candice McKiernan said. 

"The entire Wild Coast is subject to intense shark activity… the sea is not for swimming."

A bodyboarder from East London on South Africa’s eastern cape, missing for over a week and whose board was found washed up on a beach, was likely killed by a Great White shark, an examination of teeth marks has revealed.

Robert Frauenstein, who was thirty-eight and a week away from getting married, was surfing a joint called at Cintsa on the Wild Coast, that hit of coast from East London in the south to the border of KwaZulu-Natal in the north.

Frauenstein disappeared from the lineup; his distinctive pink and yellow bodyboard was found later in the day marked by bite marks.

A rep for the family wrote on Facebook,

“The teeth marks in his bodyboard are confirmed as that of a very large great white shark, possibly the same shark spotted from the air earlier in the week. We take comfort in the fact that Robert was doing what he loved and that his untimely demise would have been as swift, painless and without struggle as anyone could hope for.”

Of the 248 unprovoked shark attacks since records began in South Africa in 1905, 103 have come from the Wild Coast.

A tourist website warns visitors, “that the entire Wild Coast is subject to intense shark activity…There’s two damn good reasons why indigenous inhabitants of the coast historically avoided the water, unlike the heavy coastal utilization up the African east coast: (1) rip currents prevailing in an area where the coastal shelf plunges abruptly, and very close to land; and (2) sharks. Port St Johns has acquired the miserable reputation of a totally-out-of-proportion share of global shark attacks: it is THE hotspot. But don’t be fooled: the entire Wild Coast shares the same features. Cape Town styled shark-spotting won’t work (water’s too murky; different types of shark); and KZN-style shark nets won’t work (rip currents; besides sound conservation reasons). Most attacks have been on surfers or lifeguards: apparently the boards and lifeguard rafts resemble prey (seals – there are seals around here?), and the only way to know is to take a bite – a big bite. But that little comfort zone got blown-out in the last attack, which was in a gentle little estuary stream, with lots of swimmers around: the victim (mauled and churned into blood) was in knee-deep water. That’s right: knee-deep, out of the surf. What’s to do? Stay ankle deep, hit the pools, or just admire the view and the environment. The sea is really not for swimming.”