A tax fraudster (along with a gang of thieves), who stole $105 million of taxpayers’ money, didn’t just commit a crime that, as a judge said, deprived the community of money that could have provided schools and hospitals, he betrayed his father who was actually a Deputy Tax Commissioner! This has to go down as one of the worst crimes that has been perpetrated by someone of the Entitlement Generation.

I take no personal satisfaction lambasting Adam Cranston for conspiring with others from Plutus Payroll by using computer trickery to defraud the Australian Tax Office and the taxpayers of the country and pocket $105 million. And that’s because the fraudster’s father, Michael Cranston, was a Deputy Tax Commissioner when the crimes were committed, which had to be seen and felt by him as a gut-wrenching betrayal by someone he loved.

I knew Michael Cranston at the time as he appeared on my former Sky Business program, Switzer. Apart from being a very likeable man, he was both a great explainer of tax matters and gave a sympathetic ear to the challenges of the Tax Act as it weighed down on us as taxpayers.

He was a credit to the ATO, while his son, by his selfish actions, not only would have personally devastated Michael and his entire family, but also put a dark cloud over a fine man who had to wait until 2019 to be exonerated as having no involvement in this selfish disgraceful act of theft.

The thieves stole tax monies between 2014 and 2017, when they were arrested. Michael had to wait two years before his name was cleared.

This is how Nine.news.com.au reported the judge’s findings: “The group used Plutus Payroll and its web of second-tier companies, which were directed by vulnerable dupes, to siphon more than $105 million that should have been paid to the tax office.

“Justice Anthony Payne rejected any suggestion that Cranston was misled over the scheme, labelling suggestions the conspirator thought Plutus was a profitable company as “preposterous”.

Here’s the SMH’s take on what Justice Anthony Payne said on the matter: “Using ‘a number of apparently unrelated subcontracting companies, (which in truth were controlled by a number of the conspirators), the group skimmed PAYG (pay as you go) withholding tax and GST from money received from legitimate clients of fee-free payroll business Plutus Payroll.”

Why did he do it? Here’s the SMH’s Sarah McPhee: “At the epicentre of the $105 million Plutus Payroll tax fraud were Adam Cranston and Jay Onley, pulling the strings and together pocketing more than $11.5 million which they splashed on lavish properties, fast cars and even a luxury pen.”

In 2014, then Treasurer Joe Hockey called for the end of “the age of entitlement”, where he warned Australians that the days of governments saving businesses and jobs had passed, telling them, ''the age of entitlement is over, and the age of personal responsibility has begun”.

While this could have been applied to baby boomers (who are often seen as doing too well for most of their lives, which has culminated in them owning valuable real estate that they bought at bargain basement prices), the accusers (or anti-baby boomers) have picked up the tag of being the “Entitlement Generation.”

Spencerjamesgroup.com.au define this tag in the following way: “One group to which this phrase is often applied is Millennials, a word used to identify those born between 1980 and 2000. When referring to this group, entitlement is defined as possessing “the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges)”.

In 2013, Joel Stein of Time magazine and its website looked at The Me Me Me Generation. This is how story started: “I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.”

This is so good, so let me give you a tad more: “Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the non-profit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.” (You can read more at https://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/ )

Yep, Adam Cranston is a 36-year-old millennial and has lived up to the unfavourable generalisation of Joel Stein and other anti-millennial critics out there. Worse still, he has been an unfaithful son to a father who didn’t deserve such treachery.

Ultimately, the parents of the Me Me Me Generation are partly to blame for what they created, but the bad behavers of the millennials need to grow up and start loving back the people who gave them far too much.