REAL ESTATE AND LAND swindles have been the dark side of the important American aspiration of property ownership for all. While some schemes seem to emphasize the opportunity to speculate, to get rich for little investment, others target the average homeowner with the vision of a vacation or retirement paradise. Fraudulent deals have ranged from vacation land in Maine which appears to be solid ground only in the winter, to promises of prosperity in land surrounding the Hoover dam near Las Vegas, Nevada.

All of these schemes seem minor compared to perhaps the original American land fraud: the Yazoo lands of western Georgia, (now comprising the states of Alabama and Mississippi.) In 1789, members of the Georgia legislature authorized the sale of more than 25 million ...