Yazoo Land Scandal

The Yazoo land scandal, Yazoo fraud, Yazoo land fraud, or Yazoo land controversy was a massive fraud perpetrated from 1794 to 1803 by several Georgia governors and the state legislature. They sold large tracts of land in what is now the state of Mississippi to political insiders at very low prices. Although the law enabling the sales was overturned by reformers, the land claims were challenged in the courts for years, reaching the US Supreme Court. In the landmark decision, Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Court ruled that the contracts were binding and the state could not retroactively invalidate the earlier land sales. It was one of the first times the Court had overturned state law.

The Yazoo land fraud is often conflated with the Pine Barrens speculation. This involved Georgia's high-ranking officials making multiple gifts of grants of land for the same parcels, grants amounting to three times more land than existed in the state of Georgia. This real estate speculation occurred about the same time as that in Mississippi.