In 1922, the U.S. Marines were ordered to invade an oil field. Because the Interior Minister thought someone was stealing oil here, the Marines came and expelled them. The oil field is located in Natro County, Wyoming, in a place called Teapot Top, where the land was originally Indian, and the oil field was discovered since it was snatched away by whites.
At that time, oil began to replace coal as a source of power, and the United States allocated the oil field to the Navy in order to maintain sufficient force. Use the oil here as a strategic reserve for the Navy to prevent the warship from being unused.
There were already oil companies in Wyoming at the time, and they made huge profits. Among them, Mammoth Oil Company wanted to acquire the oil field, and they bribed the interior minister, Farr.
Why bribe the Secretary of the Interior instead of the Secretary of the Navy. It turned out that in May 1921, U.S. President Harding handed over the oil field to the Home Office.
Before entering the Cabinet, Fall was a lawyer in New Mexico, serving as a state representative, judge, and attorney general. During the Spanish-American War, he became an infantry company commander. He later became a key member of the Senate and, after Harding became president, was appointed Minister of the Interior.
Simply put, Pharr had enough legal knowledge and political experience, and he fell on top of it, brewing the biggest scandal before Watergate.
After Pharr became Minister of the Interior, he received a bribe from Mammoth Oil, a subsidiary of Sinclair Petroleum, to lease the production rights of the teapot top oil field to Mammoth and ask the Admiralty to send someone to expel the oil thieves. It also leased an oil field in California to Pan Am, which was originally the Navy's oil field. In total, Farr received about $404,000 in loans or gifts from the two oil companies.
These two leases have allowed Fard to repay a decade of arrears. The oil merchants, who had been attacked by Pharr, secretly complained to the senators, and the Senate began to investigate Pharr.
In October 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Teapot Top oil field had been acquired by illegal means, and the oil field was returned to the Navy. Sentenced to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine in October 1929, Fall became the first cabinet official to be jailed. Neither of the two oil dealers who paid the bribes was convicted of bribery, and one of them was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to testify and contempt of court.