Early in the 20th century, Puter was instrumental in carrying out the
Oregon land fraud scandal, which transferred tens of thousands of acres of federal lands given to the
Oregon and California Railroad to private hands, ultimately benefiting large timber companies and some Oregon politicians, including U.S. Senators
John H. Mitchell and
Binger Hermann, In 1902, he took his family to
Berkeley, California. Puter fled Oregon before being sentenced as had two of the other defendants. Oregon authorities declared their intention to apprehend him and his partner Horace G. McKinley anywhere in the world, and sent photographs through U. S. diplomatic channels. McKinley fled to
China on a steamship; Puter escaped capture by
U.S. Secret Service officers in an armed confrontation in
Boston, Massachusetts, in March and was subsequently a fugitive for several months before being captured in late May 1906. The
Alameda, California, police who apprehended him also discovered weapons in his rented room. After his capture and return to Oregon In 1906, while incarcerated, Puter co-wrote the book
Looters of the Public Domain with Horace Stevens, a former
General Land Office clerk. The timber land scandals were not limited to Oregon. The California Redwood Company in Humboldt County had also been running a claim scheme to secure title to thousands of acres of redwood timberlands. President
Theodore Roosevelt pardoned Puter after he had served 18 months of his sentence so that he could
turn state's evidence. ==Later life and death==