So, according to court documents, he persuaded a judge to add 160 times more acreage to his original title, making him one of the biggest landowners in the timber-rich territory. It took authorities two decades to spot the maneuver. Mr. Jamil is just one figure in Brazil's attempt to chronicle and crack down on crooked land deals, a shockingly common phenomenon known locally as grilagem.
Officials estimate that almost one-fifth of the nation's territory is under falsified titles.
That could have dire consequences for the Amazonia region, whose forests form one of the world's lungs. Many scams are being carried out with the goal of chopping down the area's teak, ebony, and softwoods. In other cases, swaths of rain forest are being bought and then resold by drug dealers laundering money. At least twice, conservation-minded foreigners bought land they were told was virgin jungle reserve, to find out that the land existed only on paper. Meanwhile, Carvalho's commission is trying to stop the fraud.