Heney was asked by U.S. Attorney General Philander Knox to serve as the Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General's office in Oregon. While there he brought to justice 33 people who had pillaged the federal lands, state school lands, and the timbered resources of the Siletz Indian Reservation in a series of trials known as the Oregon land fraud scandal. The "King of the Oregon land fraud ring", Stephen A. D. Puter, wrote in his prison cell "Looters of the Public Domain" (1908), a tell-all book with portraits of his co-conspirators and copies of documents confirming their criminal acts.