Well, this is a new one on me, but reports abound of it happening regularly now:

Virtually all Texas land is privately owned, so nearly all hunting is either at the invitation of the landowner or by hunting lease. And much of the prime hunting land in Texas is very sparsely populated.

It seems that con men are patterning landowners or their employees and learning when large tracts of land are unoccupied. The con man will place an ad somewhere like Craigslist advertising a hunting lease for a very attractive price, but cash-only, in such-in-such county, usually on the other side of the state from where it is advertised. A prospective hunter contacts the con man who makes an appointment to meet the hunter at the lease at a time when the con guy knows no one will be present. The con man shows up a little bit before the would-be hunter arrives and cuts the lock from the gate, replacing it with his own, then proceeds to show the prospect around the property, negotiating down if he has to in order to make the "sale" and walk away with the cash.

Of course, the hapless hunter leaves happily with a key to the gate only to return in a week or two to either find the lock replaced, or worse, to gain access and place his blinds and feeders on the property. Of course, all of this comes to a head when the actual landowner and the hunter(s) meet up, each wanting to know what the other is doing on the property. Meanwhile the con man is a couple of counties over doing the same thing over again.

I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't happened just down the road from me.

Unfortunately that has been going on since the mid to late 80's.

The quickest way to keep that from happening, is instead of getting all excited about getting a lease in a great area, is once the prospective hunter obtains all the pertinent contact info, place a call to the Game Warden in that county, that person will know if things are on the up and up, and it also helps TP&W and other Law Enforcement Agencies in the area in question to shut such operations down.

All too often people simply get all hot and bothered about getting on a lease in a Big Deer area, and they do not really go into the situation with their eyes open.

Another contact in some areas are local wildlife management associations, land owners that want to improve the deer herd in a county set up associations and all of them commit to a management plan for the area/county, and they know who owns what properties.