78/ 974 [Economics]. "Poyaisian Land Certificate. Certificate of 120 acres". Letterpress certificate, 49x38 cm., signed by GREGOR MACGREGOR in pen and ink, London, dated December 31, 1830 (folded). - AND 2 other certificates by the same for 400 acres and 1000 acres (both dated 1834), both signed by MacGregor.

= The Poyaisian Scheme was one of the first modern large securities fraude schemes. Set up by the Scottish soldier and adventurer Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845), who began his life of military adventuring in Venezuela and Colombia, during the struggles for independance in South America. He visited what is today Honduras, and claimed that when he was there he obtained a grant of eight million acres from George Frederick Augustus, king of the Mosquito Indians. Returning to London, Macgregor styled himself as Gregor I, cazique (chief) of the independent state of Poyais. He set about publicising his fictitious state, setting up a land office in London (and later in Paris and Glasgow) and selling land certifcates and was able to issue bonds of a Poyaisian government loan (lent by a respectable company) to investors. A group of around two hundred settlers, actually sailed to the so-called land of Poyais in central America. Discovering a barren and inhospitable jungle and swampland, only about 50 survived (who were saved by a British rescue mission). MacGregor fled to Paris in 1823 and continued his fraudulous Poyaisian activities there. After being acquitted in a French fraud trial he returned to London in 1827. He changed his chiefdom into a republic, still with him as head of state. He continued to issue bonds on a further loan of 800.000 pound to cover his debts, despite the failure of his first fraudulous attempt and a published account in 1823 by one the surviving settlers. He was able to maintain the scheme because the public disapproval focused on speculators in South American loans rather than his very colourful and positive misinterpretation of Poyais; even a pamphlet from 1827 warning investors about Poyais, makes no mention of him at all. He returned to Edinburgh and issued further land certificates to cover his debts from the defaulted securities of his previous loans. His wife died in 1837 and he returned to Venezuela the next year, where he received a citizenship and a pension because of his involvement in the Venezuelan struggle for independance. He lived out his days in Caracas where he was buried with full military honours with i.a. the president of Venezuela and his cabinet behind his coffin and was hailed as a military hero.