A Two Thousand Dollar Nebraska Land Purchase Leads to a Federal Fraud Case
The air down there was cold and smelled of damp foundation concrete and old cardboard boxes that had sat untouched since the late seventies.
A single fluorescent bulb flickered overhead, casting long shadows across the heavy metal filing cabinets that lined the walls.
Sarah had to pull three different gray metal drawers before she found the plastic container marked Lincoln County Deeds, November First to Fifteenth.
She blew a thin layer of dust off the plastic reel, her breath turning to vapor in the cold basement air.
I watched her thread the thin strip of film through the rollers of the old viewer, my hands tucked into my pockets.
“I spent twenty years looking at microfiche for Caterpillar tractor parts back in my shop days,” I said. “If the part number was off by one digit on those old film cards, the whole transmission would lock up when the replacement arrived.”
Sarah did not look up from the machine.
“This is the same thing, Arthur, only the parts are human names and deed numbers.”
She turned the plastic dial of the reader with a sharp click, advancing the film of county land transactions from the week before the public auction.
