Prison term could cap oil trader's legendary career

0 Comments | USA TODAY, December, 2005 | by David J. Lynch

HOUSTON -- Shattering the predawn quiet of the tony River Oaks neighborhood, an FBI agent rapped on Oscar Wyatt's door.

A grand jury in New York had indicted the veteran Texas oil trader, along with five others, in an alleged scheme to pay Iraqi officials "millions of dollars in secret kickbacks" under the United Nations' controversial oil-for-food program. Now, at 6 a.m. on Oct. 21, it was time to bring him in.

When the 81-year-old Wyatt saw the eight agents waiting for him, he protested vigorously. "They had to put him up against the wall and handcuff him," says Ben Berry, head of the FBI's white-collar crime unit in New York. " ... I would say he was being less than respectful."

In more than 50 years in the oil and gas business, Wyatt has never gone...