FORT COLLINS, Colo. (October 20, 2009)--Investigators have questioned a possible associate of the Colorado man who’s suspected of pulling off a hoax last week, tellilng authorities his 6-year-old son was trapped in a runaway balloon.

An attorney for the associate, Robert Thomas, said his client told sheriff's investigators about what he observed between amateur storm chasers Richard and Mayumi Heene when he helped record Richard Heene's ideas earlier this year.

Thomas earlier sold his story to the Web site Gawker.com.

Thomas' attorney, Linda Lee, said Richard Heene is "obsessed" with trying to land a TV show.

She said Heene thinks the world will end in 2012 and wants to get rich quickly "to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding."

Investigators are still looking over e-mails, phone records and financial documents from the Heene home.

Heene is a self-described amateur scientists and storm chaser whose attributed his interest in weather to a tornado that touched down in 1979 outside of McGregor while he was living in Waco and working as a carpenter, according to a 2007 profile in the Denver Post.