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After Willing passed away in Prescott while attempting to obtain the grant, Reavis paid Mr Willing's wife for her share of the claim and pursued obtaining a grant on his own. He went to Mexico and obtained copies of documents from the archives and put together a package that included a story of a Baron being granted the land by King Philip V and confirmed by King Charles III. His extensive documentation and complex story of how the land came to him was so convincing that several wealthy people backed him. Reavis officially filed for the grant on the 27th of March, 1883 in the surveyor's office in Tucson. While he was waiting for the grant to be processed he went around the Peralta Grant area collecting money for "quitclaims", in which the occupant of the land would pay to be given title once the grant was finalized. Many paid, including the Silver King mine, which paid him $25,000. One of the people he went after was Territorial Attorney Clark Churchill, who took Reavis to court and sued him. Reavis lost the suit and Churchill received clear title to his property. After this ruling the land office commissioner told the surveyor general to stop working on the Peralta grant, ending this attempt.
Not to be deterred, Reavis made another attempt at the grant. He realized his claim to the grant was a weak one, so he came up with another scheme. He married a young woman and got her to go along with a claim that she was the granddaughter of the Baron granted the land, and was to inherit. He gave her the name Dona Sophia Micaela Maso Reavis and backed up his claim with a large supply of forged documents from Mexico and Spain. Before submitting his claim he continued to raise funds from the Peralta Grant area. People were no longer paying quitclaims, so he created the Casa Grande Development Company, which attracted investors in such projects as roads, dams, and irrigation systems. Reavis collected millions from investors and spent it living the high life, with homes in San Francisco, New York, and St. Louis.
This all came to an end when Reavis's second attempt was rejected. A careful examination of the documents showed them to be forged. Some of the documents were written with a type of pen that was not available at the time the document was supposed to have been written. In addition printing styles were not consistent with the timeframe and the documents had multiple grammer and spelling errors, which would not have happened in the Spanish Royal Court.
With the rejection of his second attempt, Reavis filed a lawsuit against the Federal Government in the Court of Claims for $11 Million in damages, with the trial beginning on June 3, 1895. This backfired badly, as the Federal Government now opened an extensive investigation into the matter. The investigation showed that he had planted false documents in the archives in Mexico and Spain, forged documentation, and nearly all the witnesses he produced had been paid to provide false testimony. The government found his claim to be "wholly fictitious and fraudulent". After his claim was dismissed he was arrested and charged with a 42 count indictment, with charges of forgery, presenting false documents to the court, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
Reavis chose to fight the charges in court and was found guilty on June 30, 1896. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison and fined $5000, but got out 3 months early for good behavior. After prison, Reavis attempted to raise money to finance several development projects in Arizona, but had no takers. On November 20, 1914 Reavis died penniless in Denver, Colorado and was buried in a pauper's grave.
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