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On June 21st 1961, The Great Southwestern Land Company was incorporated in Santa Fe New Mexico by Robert, Edward and Doris Golubin. In its articles of incorporation, the stated purpose of this new corporation was to deal in real estate and, as stated in their corporate charter, “buy, sell, plat and dispose of subdivisions and acreage, to build and sell homes and business buildings, and to do any and all things usual to the general real estate development business.” They also stated that they could deal in building materials, stocks and securities among other assets. In reality, the only part of their stated purpose that they fulfilled was to “plat and dispose of subdivisions and acreage”. That they did on a massive scale on ranch land they bought and subdivided in western Taos county New Mexico. It was not an honest operation. A preview of what was to come is to be found in the history of Edward Golubin who was arrested in Oakland California in 1955 on charges of fraud relating to what the Oakland Tribune described as a “used car racket”. Used cars were sold on a plan of $25 down payment and $25 per month with the buyer required to pass a credit check or the down payment would be forfeited. Somehow, almost nobody passed the credit check. Edward’s name only appears on the articles of incorporation, it is Robert who ran Great Southwestern. Like Edward, he was also a salesman who at different times in his life sold cars, appliances and real estate. He was born in 1919 and was in his early 40s when he founded Great Southwestern. He lived until 1982 and passed away in California at the age of 63. In this course of my research, I began to focus on Golubin who came off as something of an interesting character from what little is known about him. I have a personal reference that enabled me to visualize him somewhat. Way back in the 1960s when I was a little boy, my grandma dated a car salesman named Jim. Like Golubin, Jim ended up doing prison time for his excesses. In Jim’s case, it was for passing bad checks in the state of Arizona. On the personal level, I have fond memories of Jim. He was a great guy with kids. All the deceit in his life was for adults, he loved kids. I imagine Golubin to be a similar kind of guy, a 1950s/1960s hustler type who sold cars and seasoned his guile with buckets of charm. Deceitful and dishonest but not deeply evil in any way, more like a hard hustling hard partying guy who needed a good cash flow to fund his lifestyle. If he really was like Jim, it was a lifestyle filled with excesses of alcohol and tobacco and Golubin’s death at the relatively young age of 63 was more than likely a result of that lifestyle.

After incorporation, Great Southwestern purchased inexpensive ranch land in western Taos county on real estate contract and subdivided it into Carson, Ranchos de Taos, and Tres Piedras Estates. The subdivision plats were filed before the land was paid for. All three subdivisions were done on a grid plan of 1/4 acre lots which were sold individually. There was no bridge across the Rio Grande Gorge in the early 1960s and access was difficult. The land itself was harsh and rugged with no water or other utilities. So quite naturally, Golubin focused on the out of state market and marketed the lots at fairs all around the country, the most notable of which is the 1962 worlds fair in Seattle. There, as elsewhere, he set up a booth where there were two contests, one to win a free poodle and the other to win a free lot in Taos County New Mexico with easy access to water and even golf courses. There was only one winner for the poodle but many for the free lot. Almost anyone who registered and wasn’t from New Mexico or a lawyer or a cop or had some other disqualification in their application won a lot. All the winners received a letter informing them of their luck and that a processing fee of approximately $50 was required to register their “free” lot in Taos county. Anyone who paid the fee was sent a salesman to encourage them to invest in more lots at around $500 per lot. The lots were also advertised nationally in magazines and comic books. Around 26,000 lots were sold to around 10,000 purchasers. It was a massive cash cow but there were dark clouds ahead. By the time of the Seattle Worlds Fair in July 1962, they were already in troubled water. On June 4th, 1962, the California real estate commission issued them a cease and desist order and they were no longer allowed to do business in California. They found a work around. They incorporated a new company, The Great Southwestern Development Company and transferred a portion of the lots to it. That only postponed the inevitable and on April 26th, 1963, they were indicted in federal court by the postmaster general on mail fruad charges. There were three defendants, Golubin, George E. Walker, and Lenn E. Allen. Their attorney was F. Lee Bailey. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. In the second, Golubin was convicted and Walker and Allen acquitted. Golubin appealed and lost on appeal on April 22nd, 1968. He petitioned the US supreme court to review the appeal decision and was denied. He received a 3 year prison sentence. Great Southwestern continued to operate in some form until around 1973. By the late 1960s many of the deceived buyers had stopped paying the property taxes on their lots and Great Southwestern was repurchasing them at tax auctions. The last time their corporate registration was renewed was in 1972. After that, it’s obvious that Golubin and Great Southwestern were broke. In January 1975, there was a massive tax auction where lots Great Southwestern had not paid property taxes on were sold off along with lots they had sold to others in the early 1960s that were also tax delinquent. At that auction, one lot was repurchased by Great Southwestern but the majority of the rest went to another corporation, the Cayman International Corporation. Great Southwestern’s corporate registration was revoked in 1979 and Golubin died in April 1982. As Great Southwestern was essentially a corporate alias for Robert N. Golubin, Great Southwestern died with him.

The references for this article are Great Southwestern Land Company’s articles of incorporation, the appellate decision in “Robert N. Golubin Vs. The United States of America”, numerous deeds filed by Great Southwestern in the Taos county clerk’s office, the text of the senate hearing on “Interstate Mail Order Land Sales” on May 20th 1964, and the article on Edward Golubin’s arrest in the January 1st, 1955 edition of the Oakland Tribune. The birth and death dates of Robert Golubin were found on the Mormon Church’s genealogical library. The senate hearing text also references many other similar land scams and the booth with the win a free lot contest that almost everyone who registered won was actually quite common at state fairs at that time.