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that's how bitcoin works, unlike the way your conventional banking works.
when you "authorized" (make payment) of 0.0048, the wallet would use available utxo for sending out
though I'm not sure why it used more than enough inputs and why your destination address was the 2nd output
usually by default it would only use enough utxo for the amount transacted,
and the 1st address as the payment address then 2nd address for the change address

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How did these two wallets ( 1FiN & 1Ha2 ) become into existence, and "secretly" have BTC sent to them without being shown in my tx log in my BTC Core wallet app? How can i prevent this from happening again?

these addresses are what I called as change address as I mentioned above
it was auto generated by default by the wallet and you can't prevent it from happening again,
unless you enable coin select and setting/using custom (the same) change address every time you create new transactions

Thank you for the information!

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Finally... when i run -zapwallettxes it does clear the unconfirmed txs and restores my wallet balance, but once i remove the command from the conf file and the wallet re-syncs the txs are immediately replaced and my balance goes to zero again. Suggestions?

you did run -zapwallettxes=1 -rescan as arguments in the command line?
have you tried running it while offline, see if it helps... you can re-create the tx and then go online to send it
but make sure you get the hex rawtx by typing on console: getrawtransaction yournewtxid
so if it goes wrong again you can push/broadcast the hex rawtx manually to other nodes

Yes, I ran -zapwallettxes=1, and -rescan, but i ran them separately and online. For example... I did -zap after it finished closed the program, edited the conf file to say -rescan and ran the program again. After it finished the -rescan I closed the program and edited the conf back to being blank then ran the program back up. I can give it a try offline to see if that does anything, but are you suggesting that i use both of them on the same line of text or would I put them on separate lines of text in the conf file? Also... for inputting

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getrawtransaction yournewtxid

i would do this offline or online, and are these two commands on separate lines of text or one line? What website do you recommend for brodcasting hex rawtxs? Lastly, by generating the tx offline would i get a new tx ID, and rawtx?

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Even if these two wallets are "working together" to get my topics tx come true... Would I just have to wait until it confirms, or would i have to somehow get a CPFP'd/double spend to make sure they go through?

You could just wait or like I said above, re-create the transaction with high enough tx fee
but this time you can make 2 payments (if it was your intention) at once in a single transaction (to save fee)

I think I'd rather attempt to send both my payments under a single transaction because i no longer need the 0.0048 going to the 1PEZ wallet in tx 20da23. Though from what i understand about transactions... I cannot redistribute these fund since i already "sent" them so that wallet 1PEZ receives them, and i cannot add it to my topics tx to move it to my ledger if I am able to "recover" the funds. Would i be correct?

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with high enough tx fee

I guess the ( in regards to the topic tx, because I am aware that i used a dreadfully low tx fee for the 0.0048 ) 0.00209585 BTC/kB recommended fee was not significant enough even though it costed around 75k satoshies. What fee would you recommend for this transaction?

I apologize for the multitude of questions, but I'm just trying to get an understanding on this subject so i can better myself ( and my transactions ) in the future!

Thanks again! Grin