they creep me out.

I would say that the attention whores get what's coming to them, but in the end it's gonna hurt the kid, who was just an innocent pawn, and that's a shame.

The best thing that could happen to the boy is for him to be emancipated from them as soon as he's about 15 (assuming he can prove he can take care of himself better than his parents, which proving should be a cakewalk now). IIRC, the Heenes were homeschooling their brood, so at least he doesn't have to atone for his part in this on the playground (and kids can be very cruel). If the kid doesn't try to change his name as soon as he's able to, it would surprise me.

Yeah this is stupid. I know they're being punished for fraud because the police can't be distracted and chasing down false claims everywhere. It seems more and more to me like they're being punished because everyones upset they got conned big time. It's more vindictive than it is correcting bad behavior, and that's our justice system in a nutshell.