Heir Mail #8: From PPP to FPB (and beyond)
Heiress points are dead, for now, but there's a new recurring feature in newsletter town.
Hello! You’re reading HeirMail, the only newsletter to come from me (hi) setting a Google Alert for the word “heiress” and then just writing about whatever pops up.
This week, I dispense with heiress points (bye!), so if you don’t know what those are, don’t worry, neither did I, really. I think it’s clear that heiresses get points for everything they do, just like in life no offense, so maybe we don’t need to belabor that point.
But! I still love nonsense gimmicks and imposing a level of glibness I will likely later regret, so I have added a new semi-recurring feature below. It’s a surprise!
CTRL+F to jump right to:
A 94-year-old Hawaiian heiress gets a PPP loan
Francesca Parker Barham has a new boyyyyyfriend
Turns out someone I blew off last week is the richest person in Australia
That new recurring feature — I don’t want to spoil it but the word to search is “Borgerson” (okay, if you’ve been following, that gave it away).
From the rest of the alert: Powerful Queen Cannon, Princess Aiko, Laurene Jobs, Anna Delvey, Nualphan Lamsam
“Hawaii heiress Abigail Kawananankoa got $142000 federal bailout loan,” Hawaii News Now
Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawānanakoa has a lineage so grand that the fact that I don’t have a working knowledge about her only reinforces further that the world, even just America, is vast and that I, as suspected, know nothing of it at all. These are my favorite type of heiresses! So much to learn! Abigail takes us from a literal shipwreck through the disaster that is our current coronavirus bailout. C’mon! Guess which one works out worse!
Let’s start with her family: she’s the biological daughter of Lydia Liliuokalani Kawānanakoa, a flapper who married five total times (twice to the same guy); the adopted daughter of her own grandmother and Hawaii’s last official princess, Abigail Wahiʻikaʻahuʻula Campbell Kawānanakoa; and the great-granddaughter of James Campbell, a Scots-Irishman who started as a stowaway and later survived of a whaling ship’s crash by clinging to debris and floating to shore, only to be held prisoner by Tuamotu Isalnders, and who then went on to become a sugar-processing baron and, subsequently, the owner and developer of just so, so, so, so much of Hawaii. (Somewhere, Jameson whiskey wishes they could start an advertising campaign around James.) And her own life, oh my god, there’s a mysterious death, just click here if you want to go down the rabbit hole so we can get to the news.
Abigail Kawānanakoa in a lewk | © CC BY-SA Thomas Tunsch (Wikimedia Commons)
Although he had 107 heirs as of 2007, the largest share of James’ estate has gone to Abigail the younger, 94 years old now — and she’s been in the news over the last few years because the battle over that $215 million fortune. In 2017, she had a stroke that reportedly left her impaired; her lawyer, Jim Wright, became her trustee. Abigail — still, according to the Daily Mail, considered a princess by Native Hawaiians — rejected this, fired Jim, and married her girlfriend of 20 years, Veronica Gail Worth, saying that the newlyweds would handle the money themselves. But former staffers and board members of the Kawananakoa foundation say that Veronica, who is 27 years Abigail’s junior, is “manipulating” the elderly heiress.
A judge ruled in July that former Hawaiian Electric executive Robbie Alm should be Abigail’s conservator — a word you likely know from the #FreeBritney discourse — but prior to that someone applied in Abigail’s name for the Paycheck Protection Program. Nine employees — who Fired Jim insists are personal staff — received $142,000 in PPP, despite the fact that Abigail’s income from her trust is $14 million a year. Abigail’s current lawyer says this dang legal battle with Wright has tied up all her cash, and she needs government assistance. A representative for the employees says she does not believe Abigail would have been capable of filling out the forms herself. $142,000 split nine ways is about $15,777.77 per staffer.
Estimated net worth: $215 million dollars, according to Hawaii News Now, but is it all tied up? Who can say!
At 05:26 EST on December 27th, the Daily Mail published a story about Mark Judge — whom we first met three weeks ago when he was Australian media heiress and Reigning Star of This Newsletter Francesca Packer Barham’s new friend — being arrested for stalking and beating his reported ex-girlfriend, Carolina Narvaez, with whom he’s been living since August.
At 09:53 EST that same day, the Mail published a story about FPB’s new boyfriend, Adam Cooper. He’s a personal trainer from the UK who posts a lot of Instas about pushing yourself, and there’s a picture of him with a drugged kangaroo. Francesca reportedly confirmed the relationship to Australia’s Daily Telegraph, but that shit has a paywall (I wish local news outlets would make individual stories purchasable for 50 cents a pop but I’m sure that’s wrong for media business reasons I refuse to research right now — I’m clearly very busy!).
I know sometimes I get unnecessarily hornt in here but this admittedly well-formed man does truly nothing for me. | @adamcooperfit
Later, on New Year’s Day, the site posted pictures of the new couple coming out of her apartment in twin tracksuits where separates that cost nearly $2K each. (She wears heels with her.)
After 8 weeks of on-and-off Francesca watching, my society journalism skepticism has mutated into wild speculation. It’s not a good look! It’s a very tabloid-y instinct, in fact! I will not indulge my thoughts at length here because they’re made up! I’ll just say that something feels off to me in this whole narrative, especially the initial photo of Francesca and Adam. And I know, body language is a lie! You can never guess what’s truly going on in another person’s life! Projection, etc! Did I go to the original photoset and click through every photo? Yes. Do I have any conclusions that would make any sense to write down? Absolutely not.
I have no idea what’s going on in Francesca’s life. I don’t think other Daily Mail readers do either.
Estimated net worth: The Sydney Morning Herald estimated in 2016 that her mother Gretel had $739 million AUD ($545.7 million US).
The Rineharts, an Australian mining family, popped up so briefly last week I almost didn’t even make the connection to this soapy-ass story. Last week they were, as they have been since 2011, battling over an iron ore called Hope Downs and I was too tired to really look into it. Well! Matriarch Gina Rinehart is the richest person in Australia, a title she just regained in 2020, with a $29 billion AUD fortune (about $22 billion US). Whoops! For context, even though he’s counted among US billionaires, Rupert Murdoch’s only at $13 billion USD.
Gina’s an heiress, too, although this fantastic 2013 New Yorker profile says she hates the term (“The ‘h’-word seems to be partly a gender thing,” William Finnegan writes, a thesis generally shared ~in a complicated way~ by this newsletter). She brought her father Lang Hancock’s estate back from bankruptcy, thanks in part to Hope Downs, creating the vast majority of the wealth she has now after his passing. She took over after his death in 1992 and exploded his struggling company; she did so well by seeing the potential in the Chinese market. With iron booming, she invested heavily in media — reportedly freaking journalists out. She owns the largest stake in the company that owns the Sunday Morning Herald, and shares stake in media company Ten Network Holdings with FPB’s uncle James Packer, the man who would have been Mr. Mariah Carey. Impressive empire building, although it helps to own an iron ore in the first place.
Gina once told Australian Resources and Investment Magazine, that people should stop whining, saying, “Do something to make more money yourself − spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.” She’s been fighting with three of her four children for a decade; she tried to keep their inheritance from their grandfather in her control. She didn’t go to two of their weddings.
This particular story, however, concerns her daughter Hope Rinehart (formerly Hope Welker). Hope is presumably named after her grandmother and not the iron ore; the iron ore was named after Hope Sr.
Hope the younger used to fuck her bodyguard and now he’s sad.
A broken man and his movie poster | Alon Assouline’s Instagram
Alon Assouline is the bodyguard. He was close to Hope in 2014, but she broke his heart — he was bed-ridden — and last year he published an e-book no one noticed because he changed the names and made everyone Ukranian. It was called Dangerous Protection. This year, he’s shouting from the rooftops that his novel’s Nadia is Hope, Gina’s second oldest daughter, the first among the clan to sue her mom. He claims he helped Gina and Hope have lunch once. Sexy, though; Hope’s breath was hot on his neck, or whatever.
Someone is making a movie of his story — him? And etc, Daily Mail cares now, blahblah. IDK, as happens at the end of this newsletter most weeks, I’m exhausted now, from knotty financial shenanigans and trying briefly to learn how iron ore works (everything rusty, I guess?), and this guy feels like a scammer and his story is like, k. A rich lady smashed the closest safe muscle boy. Are you entitled to bone your boss with no emotional repercussions? Maybe? This is done now.
Estimated net worth: $1.5 billion for Hope and her sister Bianca each, according to an interaction little chart from WAToday.com (Bianca is last week’s fighter). Gina’s at $22 billion USD. There’s some much more I want to say about the Rineharts, my god.
Ghislaine Trackswell!
Welcome to our new semi-recurring feature, following the happenings of Ghislaine Maxwell to the best of my ability! But still just mostly from the alert (she’s not getting her own separate alert, she already has so much).
This week: Ghislaine didn’t get bail.
The judge, in fact, was pissed at the way Ghislaine had revealed obscured assets between her first and second bail applications (the second time being when she offered to pay nearly 30 million bucks) and lied about her relationship to husband Scott Borgerson. Sputnik News compares her to Pablo Escobar who, similar to Ghislaine’s proposal that she pay for her own guards, built a swanky prison in Colombia. They also note that Scott has kids who think of G as their “proxy mother” which: woof, buddy, come on.
(Should I make one of these sections for Francesca, too? Call it the Fancesca Roundup? FPB XYZ? What about Petra and Tamara Ecclestone? The Ecclezone? No? Those stories so boring, who cares? I might do it anyways, you wait.)
From the rest of the Alert
“Who gets to be an heiress?” remains a central question to this project, and D1SoftBallNews.com has an interesting answer this week: Nick Cannon’s new daughter named Powerful Queen Cannon. Okay! Not sure I’m there with you, but something to think about. Separately, I assumed this would be a site about Division One women’s sports, but the About Us reads, “D1SoftBallNews.com is one of the most important independent realities active in the panorama of digital media.” Thicc baseball goes entirely undiscussed. The hard questions do appear to go unasked. That’ll show me!
Here’s a somewhat sad, kind-of-confusingly-translated story from a site called Inspired Traveler about 19-year-old Aiko, Princess Toshi, the daughter of Japan’s emperor. Since only 1947 there’s been a law limiting Japanese succession to dudes, banning Aiko from her place on the throne. The article makes and extended comparison between the fact that Aiko’s name means “love” and the strictures of her life.
Don’t click these links, I’m a poorer person for having done so. A site called “American Thinker” ran a New Year’s Day piece called “Tell me that you love me, Laurene Jobs,” in which the author is seemingly unimpressed with Steve and his widow’s dedication to philanthropy over inheriting their own children — quotes that he links to a February 2020 Business Insider story (fine to click but what brought this into this dude’s orbit 11 months later?). So what’s his next move? He goes ahead and offers himself to her, so that he can spend the money. Ew. The same author wrote a post in March 2020 called “The ‘Kung Flu’ Panic.”
Last week I was like, huh, Anna Delvey’s making money from her crime, seems illegal? and this week the Wall Street Journal reports that the “Son of Sam” law has been invoked in her trial to keep her from profiting. IMPACT, baby.
Apparently “Lamsam” — as in, in this case, Nualphan Lamsam, Thai banking scion — is Thai slang for “rich.” There’s more to learn about her in the South Morning China Post.