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Flash Shelton has been nicknamed the "Squatter Hunter" and helps people take their homes back.

Squatters' rights laws are some of the most bizarrely misused legal realities we have, and something no one seems to have a good answer for. Most of us have heard stories of someone moving into a vacant home and just living there, without anyone's permission and without paying rent, and somehow this is a legal question mark until the courts sort it out.

According to The National Desk, squatters' rights are a carryover from British property law and were created to ensure that abandoned property could be used and to protect occupants from being kicked out without proper notice. The argument is that it's better to have someone openly living in a home and taking care of it, properly maintaining it, versus it laying abandoned and rotting away. Families and residents add value to a community, and those residents should have rights — or so the reasoning goes.

It should go without saying that squatter law isn't meant to allow someone to just take over someone else's property, but sometimes that's exactly what happens.

A squatter takeover is exactly what happened to Flash Shelton's mother when she put her house up for rent after her husband passed away.


A woman contacted her with interest in the property, only she wanted to do repairs and look after the home instead of paying rent. Before anyone knew it, she had furniture delivered (which she later said was accidental) and set up camp, despite Shelton's mom not agreeing to the arrangement.

But since the woman had expressed her intention and already moved in, the matter was out of police hands, as Shelton found out when he tried to contact the local sheriff. If that sounds like trespassing to you, well, join the club.

“They said, ‘I’m sorry but we can’t enter the house, and it looks like they’re living there, so you need to go through the courts',” he shared in a YouTube video.


Shelton rightfully didn't want the expense of a court battle, so he took matters into his own hands—not with violence, but with logic. He had his mom lease the home to him, and then told the squatter that she had to move everything out because he was moving things in.


squatters, homeowners, criminals, trespassing, law, property law, viral videos, youtube, squatter hunter How exactly is squatting not trespassing? It's complicated, for some reason. Giphy

“If they can take a house, I can take a house," he said.

He was calm and clear about her having to get everything out within the day or he would have people come and take it, and thankfully, she didn't put up a big fight.

That experience made him realize how squatter law can be abused, but that there's a faster system for removing a squatter than to go through the court system. If a squatter can move in and force a homeowner to take them to court to prove they are living there illegally, then he could simply move in alongside the squatter, putting the squatter in the position of having to take the homeowner to court instead.

"The legal process is so slow, and at some point when they're in there, you're going to feel like they have more rights than you do and that's how you're going to be treated. So even though you it's your house and you're paying the mortgage or whatever, at some point squatters feel like they have more rights than you, so they don't have an incentive to leave until a judge tells them to, until they're actually ordered to, and that could take months."

After successfully removing the squatters in his mother's house, Shelton has been tackling similar squatter situations for other homeowners in California, earning him the nickname "The Squatter Hunter."

"All I'm doing is becoming a squatter and flipping this process on them," Shelton told CBS News. "I figured if they could take a house, I could take a house."

According to CBS, he's successfully removed a dozen squatters in the past year. ""I'm not going in and I'm not hurting anyone," he said. "I'm not kicking them out, I'm not throwing them out." He's literally just moving in himself, setting up cameras, and then creating small annoyances until the squatters get fed up enough to move out; like making uncomfortable alterations to the home or making a ton of noise at inopportune hours.

Shelton parlayed his success into a reality show on A&E called, fittingly, Squatters. It premiered in July of 2025. To put it lightly, it looks intense! Clips posted on Shelton's social media show hostile standoffs with angry squatters and even he and his team causing damage to the home or creating nuisances to help drive the squatters out.

California isn't the only state that has seen issues with squatters. There are squatter stories from all over the U.S. of people moving into a property and refusing to leave without a court order, tying owners up in lengthy, expensive legal battles.

Though squatting is relatively rare overall, some areas of the country have more issues than others. California, Texas, Georgia, and Florida are areas, in particular, that struggle with squatters and abandoned properties.

Shelton even has a Change.org petition to try to get squatter laws changed to "make squatting in residential maintained homes criminal." Making squatting illegal "will shift the burden of proof onto the squatter and make the crime punishable with restitution an option for damages," the the petition states.

Not all homeowners will have access to someone like Shelton and his team to fight back against squatters. But until the laws change, he's doing as much as he can.

Watch Shelton share his personal story:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.


Traveling during a pandemic is risky, no matter who you are or where you're going. It's also beset with rules and restrictions put in place every step of the way, from airports to airlines to governments of the places you're visiting. Depending on where you're going, breaking those rules can have serious consequences—beyond just potentially spreading a deadly virus.

Skylar Mack, 18, learned that lesson the hard way after she was arrested in the Cayman Islands for breaking the British territory's mandatory 14-day quarantine. The Mercer University pre-med student from Georgia flew to the Cayman Islands on November 27 on a visit with her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, who is from the territory. According to TODAY, Mack tested negative for COVID-19 before she left and again after arrival, but was still supposed to remain isolated for two weeks.

On day two of quarantine, Ramgeet competed in a jet ski competition and Mack went to watch him. According to local news, neither of them wore a mask or practiced social distancing at the event. Mack also left the electronic bracelet she was supposed to wear behind, after reportedly asking the public health department to loosen the tracker the day after her arrrival.


Both Ramgeet and Mack were arrested for breaking pandemic protocol.

The Cayman Islands are home to about 64,000 people and have seen 311 cases and two deaths from COVID-19. The territory has enacted strict rules for keeping their numbers low, including quarantining travelers. Punishments for breaking the rules were increased the day before the jet ski competition, according to Cayman Compass. Previously, a breach could result in a sentence of up to one-year imprisonment and/or a fine of $1,000. That was increased to up to two years imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

Ramgeet and Mack both pled guilty to the breach, and were initially sentenced to 40 hours of community service and a $2,600 fine. But a prosecutor successfully argued that the sentence was not stringent enough to serve as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to break the rules. On appeal, Mack was sentenced to four months in prison. She and Ramgeet are the first people to be sentenced under the Caymans' harsher punishments.

Mack's lawyer, Jonathan Hughes, argues that the government is trying to make an example of Mack without taking into consideration her age and history of responsible behavior. Mack, an honors student, has never had any run-ins with the law.

"They're two young people who have never been in trouble before," Hughes said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "This is the first time they've had interaction with police, the courts, prison."

In an interview on TODAY, Huges said, "This particular sentence would have a particularly harsh effect on her, and the court ought to have considered the individual before it, not just the crime."

In a conversation with TODAY, Mack's grandmother indicated that it was out of character for her granddaughter to break the rules.

"It's not like her to make this kind of a mistake," Jeanne Mack said. "She knows she screwed up. She knows she should have to pay for it."

She also shared how Skylar is faring in prison, where she's been since December 15.

"She cries, she wants to come home," Jeanne Mack told TODAY. "She knows she made a mistake. She owns up to that, but she's pretty hysterical right now."

People have reacted to the story in predictably divergent ways, with some saying that four months of prison for an 18-year-old who simply went to a jet ski competition is too harsh, and others saying that she's legally an adult and has the same responsibility to follow the laws of the nation she's in as any other adult. Some feel that young adults often make stupid choices and that Mack could learn from her mistake without such a harsh punishment, while others point out that a deadly pandemic is not a time for leniency for "youthful indiscretion." There's also no shortage of people with little sympathy for someone who has the privilege of being able to travel to a tropical island in a pandemic choosing to flout protocols in place to protect the entire population.

Meanwhile, Mack's lawyer and family are hoping for an overturn of the four-month imprisonment. Hughes is arguing in a court of appeals today for a lesser sentence, and the family is trying various avenues, including contacting President Trump.

Mack was originally scheduled to fly home today. While there are no binding quarantine rules for Americans returning from international travel, it's perhaps worth pointing out that the per capita death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is 30 times higher than in the Cayman Islands.

Welp. Here we are, America. Exactly where millions of us expected we would be if President Donald J. Trump didn't the win an election that he wanted, expected, and thought he was entitled to win. His refusal to concede, alleging fraud and cheating without any solid evidence, is not the least bit surprising. Heck, he told us himself that it was coming. If he lost, this was the plan all along—deny the results, claim fraud, and don't back down.

That doesn't change the fact that it's effing insane, of course, and the fact that we're sitting here watching a sitting president undermine a free election in America should be deeply concerning to every American.

Instead, we have arguments like this:

"But what about all the fraud and the stealing and the..." NO. No thank you to all of that. These are the deluded musings of a malignant narcissist who is literally incapable of admitting defeat and should not be entertained or enabled.

"But don't you care about having a fair election, with legal votes counted and illegal votes not counted?" Yes, of course. The idea that we should only count legal votes and throw out illegal votes is not some great epiphany that needs to be stated—that's literally just an election. Our states' voting systems are set up with checks and safeguards and fail-safes to make sure that that's what happens, and those system generally work as they should.

That being said, there are always some irregularities and tallying issues that pop up in every election, which is why we have processes in place to check for them. We just don't usually put a microscope-of-doubt on the process as it chugs along. That microscope has resulted in people seeing only bits and pieces of the process, which leads to erroneous assumptions at best and baseless accusations at worst. And when those assumptions and accusations are broadcast from the supposed leader of the free world, it leads to chaos, confusion, and crisis of democracy.


This is where we are. Good times.

The one thing we should all agree on is that a candidate does have the right to legal challenges if they truly do see issues that aren't being caught by the normal process. If Trump wants to throw his or his supporters' money at lawsuits, more power to him. But those lawsuits have to have actual evidence to back them, as attorney Joanne Molinaro pointed out in a viral TikTok video this weekend.

Most of us who aren't lawyers yawn at legalese, but Molinaro's entertaining and informative explanation of how this actually works is fabulous.

"Let's talk about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure!" Molinaro begins. "First, Rule 8 and the Supreme Court requires that all complaints include FACTS, not legal conclusions. Next, let's talk about Rule 9(b), which says that fraud complaints are SPECIAL! In order to survive dismissal, a fraud complaint needs to allege who did the fraud, the date and time they did the fraud, where they did the fraud, and how they did the fraud. So general allegations like 'how could he get that many votes when no one came to his rallies?' is just not gonna cut it, honey. It also has to allege damages, i.e., enough votes were affected that it would actually change the results."

"And finally I bring to you my favorite rule!" she continued. "Under Rule 11, when you file a complaint you are making a representation to the court that the facts contained in your complaint actually have evidentiary support. If a complaint doesn't have evidentiary support or if it's unlikely to lead to evidentiary support, it will not only be thrown out, you'll be subject to sanctions!"

While holding a piece of her hair, which might just be the best part of the video, Molinaro explained, "While it's true that Rule 11 rarely gets enforced, when a lawyer starts talking 'But Rule 11??' what they're actually trying to say is that the complaint is full of sh*t."

A lack of evidentiary support is why Trump's lawsuits so far haven't gone anywhere. Many have been dismissed outright, in fact. And today The Wall Street Journal reported that the 28-member delegation of international observers invited by the Trump administration has given high marks to the way last week's elections were conducted and is criticizing President Trump for his baseless allegations of systematic fraud.

Again, the notion that the outcome of the election is illegitimate is nothing but the rantings of a man who can't handle losing and the sycophantic enablers who enjoy the power they receive in his orbit. Unfortunately, that man is the president of the United States and his words and behavior matter.

Thankfully, that won't be the case for much longer.

Pete Buttigieg is having a moment. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana keeps trending on social media for his incredibly eloquent explanations of issues—so much so that L.A. Times columnist Mary McNamara has dubbed him "Slayer Pete," who excels in "the five-minute, remote-feed evisceration." From his old-but-newly-viral explanation of late-term abortion to his calm calling out of Mike Pence's hypocrisy, Buttigieg is making a name for himself as Biden's "secret weapon" and "rhetorical assassin."

And now he's done it again, this time taking on the 'originalist' view of the Constitution.

Constitutional originalists contend that the original meaning of the words the drafters of the Constitution used and their intention at the time they wrote it are what should guide interpretation of the law. On the flip side are people who see the Constitution as a living document, meant to adapt to the times. These are certainly not the only two interpretive options and there is much debate to be had as to the merits of various approaches, but since SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett is an originalist, that view is currently part of the public discourse.

Buttigieg explained the problem with originalism in a segment on MSNBC, speaking from what McNamara jokingly called his "irritatingly immaculate kitchen." And in his usual fashion, he totally nails it. After explaining that he sees "a pathway to judicial activism cloaked in judicial humility" in Coney Barrett's descriptions of herself, he followed up with:


"At the end of the day, rights in this country have been expanded because courts have understood what the true meaning of the letter of the law and the spirit of the Constitution is. And that is not about time traveling yourself back to the 18th century and subjecting yourself to the same prejudices and limitations as the people who write these words.

The Constitution is a living document because the English language is a living language, and you need to have some readiness to understand that in order to serve on the court in a way that's going to make life better. It was actually Thomas Jefferson himself who said 'we might as well ask a man to wear the coat that fitted him when he was a boy' as expect future generations to live under what he called 'the regime of their barbarous ancestors.'

So even the founders that these kind of dead-hand originalists claim fidelity to understood better than their ideological descendants—today's judicial so-called conservatives—the importance of keeping with the times. And we deserve judges and justices who understand that."

It's not just what Mayor Pete says, but the way he says it. While we have plenty of politicians who rant and rave, sometimes totally incoherently, Buttigieg calmly and coherently destroys arguments with intelligence, eloquence, and compassion. He almost sounds as if he's telling a bedtime story while he blowtorches political talking points into oblivion. It's really something to witness.

It's also apparently something many people totally missed during the primaries. Multiple social media posts asking, "Where was this Mayor Pete on the campaign trail?" have been met with Buttiegieg fans saying, "Umm, this is who he always was. You just missed it." In our ugly political landscape, the guy who doesn't yell or say outrageous things, who methodically lays out arguments, and who forces people to think critically doesn't stand out in a crowded field as much as he probably should.

But the 39-year-old veteran still has many years ahead of him in politics, and there is little doubt that Buttigieg will find a place in a Biden administration. Please just keep on talking, Pete. After nearly four years of word salad coming from the White House, intelligent thoughts expressed in full sentences is a welcome change.

And yeah. Love that kitchen.