For years, James Addison Reavis convinced people that he owned a massive piece of Arizona. And they paid him. Reavis claimed an 18th-century Spanish king had granted millions of acres across Arizona and New Mexico to a noble family called the Peraltas. The problem was, the family history behind the claim was largely invented. He spent years studying old Spanish and Mexican records, then created forged documents designed to look authentic and planted them into historical archives. He even used old portraits as supposed members of the Peralta family. Then he found a teenage Mexican orphan, convinced her she was the last surviving Peralta heir, helped build a paper trail around her identity, and eventually married her. The scheme worked. Railroads and mining companies paid Reavis to avoid disputes over land he claimed to own. Powerful lawyers and businessmen backed him publicly, and his claim stretched across millions of acres from central Arizona toward New Mexico. Federal investi...