Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leases US Navy oil reserves to private oilmen without bidding, in return for cash and loans. He becomes the first cabinet member sent to prison.
Contested history
Consensus: Fall took roughly $400,000 from oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny while leasing them naval reserves, and was convicted of accepting a bribe in 1929.
Fall was bribedEstablished
A jury convicted him, and the Supreme Court voided the leases in 1927.
Doheny's $100,000 was an innocent loanDebated
A 1930 jury acquitted Doheny of giving the same bribe Fall was convicted of taking, a contradiction historians still point out.
President Harding knew of the payoffsUnsupported
Investigators found no evidence Harding knew; he died in 1923 before the full story emerged.