Criminal, Author. Stephen Puter received national notoriety starting at the end of the 19th century for his shady land dealings in Oregon, his adventures while escaping law enforcement, and authoring his 30-chapter memoirs, “Looters of the Public Domain” in 1908. With him declaring himself as “King of the Oregon Land Fraud Ring,” the book documents the history of the Oregon Land Frauds for a half century. Nation-wide newspaper coverage smeared his name in headlines. The son of Irish immigrants, he had no formal education, working in the lumber industry from a young age. In 1875 after helping a surveyor subdivide land for a township in Houmboldt County, California, he enlisted men to file fraudulent homestead patents, then selling the land for profit to a timber company. For Puter, money was growing on trees. This was beginning of his career as a criminal. In 1888 he left California for Portland, Oregon, and by bribing Federal officials, he continued to sell fraudulent homestead patents for the next thirty years. In 1900 Puter coerced men that he had found in saloons and on the waterfront to filed patents for several fraudulent homestead claims in Township 11-7 near the isolated town of Detroit. Since the town was isolated, actual inspection of the property was doubtful, according to Puter's reasoning, but federal inspectors were sent to the site. After paying bribes to two inspectors for positive inspection reports, his homestead patent claims had not been approved by the General Land Office. At this point, Puter traveled to Washington D.C and paid Oregon Senator John Hipple Mitchell $2,000 to have his land patents be hurriedly approved. In the summer of 1902, an investigation into Puter's shady land dealings with bribes was started by the United States Department of the Interior. A total of 1,000 men were arrested but only 35 were taken to trial. After delaying the trial as long as he could, on November 23, 1904 his two-week long trial began with witness after witness being summoned for the prosecution, yet the defense did not call one single witness. Puter and those who helped him were all found guilty. On December 31, 1904 , Senator John Mitchell was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, charging him with accepting a bribe of $2,000 from Puter in exchange for influencing the General Land Office to hurriedly approve fraudulent homestead patents. Not only did Puter testify against Senator Mitchell at that trial, but Mitchell's law partner and private secretary did also, delivering the verdict of guilty on July 3, 1906. Before a sentence was given, Senator Mitchell died, while waiting for an appeal in the United States Supreme Court. When Puter realized that he was being investigated for other acts of fraud, which would compounded his sentence time, he fled law enforcement going to Boston. He was apprehended by the United States Secret Service in March of 1906, but made an escape, disappearing into the busy streets of the city. After being on the run from the law for months, he was captured in Alameda, California in May of 1906, was expedited to Oregon, and sentenced to two years in the Multnomah County jail. While he was in jail, he wrote his memoirs with the help of General Land Office clerk, Horace Stevens. After serving an eighteen-month sentence, he turned witness for the prosecution against others in these land fraud dealings. This included testifying against Oregon State congressmen and wealthy timber men in the state. For this testimony, President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned Puter on December 31, 1907 with him leaving jail on his 51st birthday for Alameda, California. In the following years, he found employment with lumber companies throughout California. In July of 1916, he was indicted with others for “Illegal use of the Mails and Fraud” during an attempt for yet another land fraud scandal. Several years later, he was fined $1,500 after pleading guilty to land fraud. Over nearly 50 years, Puter had transferred tens of thousand of acres of federal lands given to the Oregon and California Railroads to private individuals, who sold the land for profit to large timber companies, hence defrauded the Federal government of thousands of dollars. He and his family settled eventually in San Mateo County, California. His wife died two weeks after his death.