For more than a decade, a man from Missouri convinced people he owned a massive piece of Arizona. And people paid him. James Addison Reavis had learned forgery during the Civil War, then later realized Spanish land grants could be extremely valuable because the U.S. was required to recognize legitimate claims. So he invented one. Reavis created a fictional noble family called the Peraltas and claimed King Ferdinand VI of Spain had granted them an enormous tract of land in 1748. He spent years studying old records in Mexico and Spain, then planted forged documents into real archives to make the story look legitimate. He even bought old portraits and presented the people in them as Peralta ancestors. His claim stretched from around Phoenix toward Silver City, New Mexico, covering millions of acres. Then he found a teenage Mexican orphan, convinced her she was the last surviving Peralta heir, altered records to support the story, and eventually married her. And somehow, it worked. ...