On July 23, 1898, future Placerita Canyon conman Milfred Reno Yant was born in Alger, Ohio.

Yant would become notorious in the 1930s for defrauding honest residents of Los Angeles County out of their funds through a fake oil-field scheme in Placerita Canyon. Ironically, he later discovered oil in the same area, thereby becoming a legitimate oil baron.

Yant was born to Ward H. and Henrietta Yant in Alger, Hardin County, Ohio.

After completing his second year of high school, Yant enlisted in the Navy during World War I. He signed up on April 26, 1917, in Cleveland and attended boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes near Chicago. Yant served for only 166 days before an honorable discharge on Nov. 14, 1917, due to hospitalization.

In the early 1930s, Yant convinced investors to invest in a nonexistent oil field in Placerita Canyon.

Yant was known for his respectable appearance, with a pudgy build, a middle-aged stoop, and open expression. In 1935, his demeanor helped him sell large amounts of steep, dry, brushy land in the barren hills above Placerita Canyon. Despite the land’s poor appearance, he sold it for $1,950 an acre—$1,900 more than he paid.

Yant’s scheme was straightforward. He set up a corrugated-tin clubhouse on leased land in the oak-shaded canyon. He enticed elderly people from Los Angeles with free bus rides and lunches.

From the clubhouse, they could see four old, broken-down oil derricks nearby. Before leaving, many believed that the land for sale was in the lush canyon bottom and that oil was just beneath the surface.

Yant sold parcels as small as one-hundredth of an acre. He employed an agent who would approach buyers, claim to represent a major oil company, and offer $5,000 for a full acre. This convinced many to buy even more land, but the supposed oil company agent was never seen again.

By the end of the first year, Yant had earned $242,000 and still owned more land. Eventually, his buyers grew suspicious, and Yant was sent to San Quentin prison for two years.

After his release, Yant was imprisoned again for violating his parole—he helped a friend defraud a woman of her money.

When released the second time, he traveled to Honolulu during World War II, where he secured a job with the Army Engineers and quickly became supervisor to 300 electricians. He later worked at the Hanford atomic-energy plant on the mainland, then returned to California in 1944.

Yant opened an electrical appliance store in Hollister and lived quietly… at least for a while.

One of his customers was a wealthy Spanish cattleman named Ramon Samovia; Rant confided to Samovia that oil had just been discovered near some property he owned in Placerita Canyon, and Yant would be rich as soon as he dug up enough money to sink a well himself. Samovia bought into his scheme for $53,000.

In 1948, Yant dutifully sank a well, but not near the canyon bottom as Samovia had expected, but high on his own hilly acres. To everyone’s amazement, Yant struck oil: 2,000 barrels a day. He quickly sank four more successful wells.

By this time, Samovia, who had heard a little of Yant’s complicated past, had sold his interest to a rich Texas oilman named Tevis Morrow. Morrow rushed in 18 bulldozers, five drilling rigs and an army of roughnecks; he spent half a million and in 45 days had sucked 240,000 barrels out of the barren ground.

A wild boom began as a horde of lease-hungry oil speculators and scores of Yant’s once disgruntled suckers (many of whom had never filed their deeds) converged on the canyon. It was during this rush that the field came to be known colloquially as “Confusion Hill.”

The results were spectacular. Amid angry litigation set off by the rush, the California superior court reversed a law which allowed but one well to the acre, and oil derricks began to rise on Yant’s old subdivision like quills on a porcupine’s back. In less than a week, 44 drilling rigs were trucked up the single road to the field; 10,000 men labored feverishly at the task of tapping the common oil pool below.

In 1949, there were 154 wells pumping on one 80-acre tract and 4 million of the pool’s estimated 18 million barrels had been sucked out. The Placerita boom knocked the price of crude oil from $2.16 to $1.53 a barrel in Los Angeles.

In a TIME magazine article, “All’s Well that Ends Well” from December 1949, Yant insisted that the oil find “vindicated” him.

“Some people think I’m a scoundrel and some think I’m a wonderful guy — depending on whether they made or didn’t make money out here,” he said. “But do you know what? I don’t give a damn. I’m gonna eat for the rest of my life, I’ll tell you that.”

On Dec. 19, 1963, at age 64, Yant married Maria E. Charles, 35, marking at least his second marriage. Yant died a widowed miner when he died of a heart attack at the VA Hospital in Houston on Sept. 16, 1972. He is buried at Houston National Cemetery.

The oilfield would change hands several times.

In 1999, Berry Petroleum purchased the approximately 700-acre Placerita Oil Field from Aera Energy LLC, a joint venture between Shell and ExxonMobil.

In 2011, Berry began flooding older wells on its Placerita property with steam to boost production to 2,300 barrels per day.

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.

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