 What crime has Zeckler committed to warrant imprisonment?
There was a startled gasp from within, and a skinny, gnarled little man suddenly appeared in the guard's light, like a grotesque, twisted ghost out of the blackness. Why, I've been in here for years—" "Look, Zeckler, the name is Meyerhoff, and I'm not your pal," Meyerhoff snapped. I sent an appeal to the Terran Consulate the first day I was arrested. "You've committed the most heinous crime these creatures can imagine, and they're going to get you for it if it's the last thing they do. Altair I had been recognized at once by the Trading Commission as a commercial prize of tremendous value, but early reports had warned of the danger of wildcat trading on the little, musty, jungle-like planet with its shaggy, three-eyed inhabitants—warned specifically against the confidence tactics so frequently used—but there was always somebody, Meyerhoff reflected sourly, who just didn't get the word. They've built up the most confusing and impossible system of barter and trade imaginable, aimed at individual survival, with land as the value behind the credit. Lying is the time-honored tradition, with their entire legal system built around it." They have only the haziest idea what truth represents, and they've shrugged off the idea as impossible and useless." Encroachment on private property is legal grounds for murder on this planet, and twelve of them descended on the same chunk of land at the same time, all armed with title-deeds."
 fraud
 embezzlement  fraud  encroachment  indecent exposure