Teapot Dome scandal Teapot Dome scandal The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 19211923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison; no one was convicted of paying the bribes. Before the Watergate scandal,
Salad Oil scandal De Angelis, a former commodities broker who had been in trouble previously for providing the federal school lunch program with poorly prepared meat. Despite this, he was able to obtain a contract with Food for Peace, a federal program which sold excess food stocks to poor countries. De Angelis discovered that he could obtain loans based upon the company's supposed inventory of salad oil. Ships apparently full of salad oil would arrive at the docks, and inspectors would confirm that the ships were indeed full of oil, allowing the company to obtain millions in loans. In reality, the ships were