United States v. Leonard R. Shewfelt and Imperial County Land Company

At a jury trial, appellants Shewfelt and Imperial County Land Company (hereinafter Imperial Land) were found guilty of 14 counts of mail fraud, violations of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341 . Shewfelt was sentenced to 14 two-year prison terms, the sentences to run concurrently. Imperial Land was fined $1,000 for each count upon which it was convicted for a total of $14,000. Finding against appellants on all issues raised, we affirm their convictions.

Viewing, as we must, the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the following can be unraveled from this seemingly never-ending spool of trickery and deceit. The real property in issue is desert land located east of the Saltón Sea in Imperial County, California. In the 1920s these lands were sold by a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company (the United States had granted these lands to the Southern Pacific at the turn of the century) to speculators who promptly sold them to the general public in sections of approximately ten acres each. In 1930 and 1931, Imperial County removed large areas of these lands from its tax rolls because the administrative cost of their taxation was greater than the…