Owen stiffed for almost a mill, Tyler for half a brick, Mikey 151k.

One year ago, cops swooped on the bookkeeper for the noted Wright family who’d been secretly transferring herself cash to invest in horse-racing bets and poker machines.

“The rest of the money was wasted,” they said. 

Shane Maree Hatton, a family friend of the Wrights, although that friendship has since become somewhat strained, was a bookkeeper for the Wright’s plumbing biz.

When the kids started to rake in the sponsor cash, Hatton took on their finances, too.

“There is a trend of family friends and relatives, who are less than qualified, managing large amounts of money and they can’t resist the temptation of taking some of the money for themselves,” the State Crime Command Director, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett told The Daily Telegraph.

Red flags went up when celeb agent Nick Fordham, who handles Tyler’s sponsorship deals, saw the books, and noticed the balance was a little lower than expected.

Owen blamed his parents for ripping into his fortune.

Hatton, a well-preserved woman of fifty-three years whose neatly pressed blonde crown suggests a love affair with sun and sea, was caught hand in jar, by the fraud squad, and hit with 749 charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage. 

Court documents showed the extent of the fraud waged over eight years, with Owen being stiffed for almost a million bucks as he struggled to overcome a mysterious brain injury.

From 2012 until 2020, 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.

Earlier today, Hatton was jailed for a minimum of three years and ordered to pay back half the money stolen, the court told she’d paid back one hundred k already. 

Hatton told the sentencing judge,The addiction had taken over. I didn’t feel like I could stop.”

A happy ending for no one.

Conan Hayes "at the center of many of the most critical points of Trump's effort to undermine democracy.”

If you’ve been following the travails of Conan Hayes, you’ll know his jagged trajectory from tamer of giant Cloudbreak and Teahupoo to toy merchant to detective uncovering electoral frauds.

(You can slide in there his busy courtroom schedule, too, dealing with a felony charge and various lawsuits.)

Three weeks ago, the NY Times revealed Conan was a major player in an “election denial network” who was paid $200,000 by Donald Trump’s legal team, and  who allegedly went undercover to make copies of election software, searching for evidence the Dems stole the show from the Grand Old Party in 2020.

Now, following the arrest of a third Mesa County election official, Colorado’s The Daily Sentinel has revealed investigations are “ongoing” into Conan’s role in the alleged scheme to make copies of election software.

A little background. 

Back in March, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peter was indicted by a Mesa County grand jury on seven felony and three misdemeanor counts of election tampering and misconduct after Colorado officials said she “allowed an unauthorized person into a secure facility during an annual upgrade to the county’s election equipment software, compromising the equipment.”

That person, it’s alleged, is Conan.

Per the Sentinel,

Though previous court documents hinted at his identity, the affidavit names that person, California resident Conan James Hayes. So far, no charges have been filed against him or others cited in the affidavit, such as Garfield County resident Sherronna Bishop, but it indicates investigations are ongoing.

“Brown conspired to misrepresent the role and identity of the person — Conan Hayes — who they intended to use, and did use, to copy the hard drive by using the identity of Gerald Wood,” Cannon wrote in the affidavit.

“Brown’s actions, statements and/or inactions were a — successful — attempt to influence the public servant’s decisions and actions before and during the trusted build through Sandra’s misrepresentations,” Cannon added. “Wood no longer is a target of the investigation. The person who completed that computer services using Wood’s identity is still under investigation.”

A story in Vice on the “MAGA Army profiting off Trump’s election lies,” described Conan as being “at the center of many of the most critical points of Trump’s effort to undermine democracy.”

He was part of Byrne’s “Bad News Bears” team in D.C. in the weeks after the election, working to find voting anomalies. Then he was in Antrim County, Michigan, as part of a team flown in by Byrne to examine Dominion voting machines. The resulting report, written in part by Hayes, was held up by Trump in the Oval Office as proof of voter fraud, the former Attorney General Bill Barr told the January 6 committee.

Then, Hayes was reportedly in Phoenix for the bogus Maricopa County recount effort led by Cyber Ninjas. And in August, QAnon influencer-turned-congressional candidate Ron Watkins claimed that Hayes was the person who took hard-drive images from Dominion voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado, where clerk Tina Peters is currently facing felony charges for tampering with election equipment.

Darkly exciting.

“We’d become super super good friends. We were pen pals, emailing daily. He was on and off with Pamela Anderson, I was helping him through that. And a few of my closest friends, guys and girls, said you gotta seal the deal."

What’s the worst text message you wish you could’ve unsent immediately after punching the hit button, that still haunts etc?

I gave my phone to a boozed gal in a bar one night, told her she could hit anyone she wanted, say whatever she wanted, and the dreadful woman wrote an unfathomably vile missive about the mother, dying of cancer as fate would play it, of the recipient.

Apple, of course, has released an unsend function for messages on its IOS16 update, which gives the writer fifteen minutes to change their mind.

The podcast of the insanely popular Inspired Unemployed Instagram account, two Australian tradies turned folk heroes, one-point-four-mill followers, riffed on the update in their latest episode, which is titled “Dedicated to Kelly Slater” for obvious reasons.

An Australian women of roughly middle age called in and described meeting Kelly at a bar-restaurant in Jan Juc, near Bells, twenty years ago, and how he memorised her telephone number after hearing her tell it to someone else, leading to a long-term and, mostly platonic, friendship.

The woman told the hosts Jack Steele and Matt Ford she was determined not to go beyond making out, or “pashing” as she describes it, using a long disappeared term, for she sought a long-term friendship not a one-time roll in the hay.

Her friends, however, convinced her there would come a time, perhaps in her dotage, when she’d regret, terribly, her decision not to ride the famous prong.

“We’d become super super good friends. We were pen pals, emailing daily. He was on and off with Pamela Anderson, I was helping him through that. And a few of my closest friends, guys and girls, said you gotta seal the deal… my best friend said you’re going to become old and regret you didn’t do it… I promised I’d text her as soon as it happened.”

Anyway, a little while later Slater is in Sydney, mystery gal in Melbourne.

She flies up.

“Middle of the day. Saturday. We obviously did the do. We were both in the shower and all I could think of was, shit, I have to call my best friend. I literally got out of the shower, wasn’t even dressed, and messaged these exact words. ‘Did it. Had sex. Going to leave now.’”

The message went to Slater, she says, not pal.

Despite disaster, she knew she had to inform pal of event.

The text went to Slater again.

“He was in the shower. I was sitting on the front of the bed. He asked me what was wrong, I said, can you please give me your phone? Give it to me!”

The friendship, she says, fizzled after the texts were revealed although, “I think he felt he had to prove himself after that. All I can say is he’s very competitive.”

Tall tale or true?

(Story starts at 25:22.)