--- aliases: - Herbert Hunt - W. Herbert Hunt - W.H. Hunt category: "Business & Finance" tags: - Person - WilliamHerbertHunt - Oil - SilverThursday - Wiretapping - Dallas summary: "Son of H.L. Hunt who was indicted with his brother Bunker for wiretapping their father's aides, was found liable in the 1980 silver manipulation, and kept Petro-Hunt in a trust beyond his creditors' reach." born: 1929-03-06 died: 2024-04-09 location: "Dallas, Texas" relations: - type: relative_of with: "[[Nelson Bunker Hunt]]" role: "brother" fn: 1 created: 2026-09-21 updated: 2026-10-28 --- William Herbert Hunt (March 6, 1929 to April 9, 2024) was the third son of [[H.L. Hunt]] and [[Lyda Bunker Hunt]] and the business partner of his older brother [[Nelson Bunker Hunt]]. He was born in [[El Dorado, Arkansas]], and ran [[Placid Oil Company|Placid Oil]] and [[Penrod Drilling Company|Penrod Drilling]], the companies held in the trusts their father created for the first family.[^1][^2] ### The Wiretaps In the autumn of 1969 Herbert and Bunker Hunt engaged a [[Houston]] private investigation agency to place electronic surveillance on houses in [[Dallas, Texas|Dallas]], telling its president that they had been the victims of extensive embezzlement. The targets were four [[Hunt Oil Company|Hunt Oil]] executives, among them their father's security chief, the former FBI agent [[Paul Rothermel]]. The agency's men recorded the telephones from rented cars, edited the tapes, and delivered them to the brothers, who paid an itemized bill. A policeman in [[Richardson, Texas|Richardson]] stopped one of the men, [[Jon Joseph Kelly]], on January 16, 1970, and found a recorder in his car. Within three weeks the brothers had told Senator [[James Eastland]] that they were trying to have their father declared incompetent. Kelly and [[Patrick McCann]] were convicted, and named the brothers afterward. Both were indicted in 1973. The [[United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit|Fifth Circuit]] reinstated the suppressed tape evidence against them on December 23, 1974. In July 1975 they were indicted again, with the lawyer [[Percy Foreman]], for obstructing justice by paying for the detectives' silence, and were acquitted.[^3][^4][^5][^6] ### Soybeans and Silver On April 28, 1977, the [[Commodity Futures Trading Commission]] sued Herbert and Bunker Hunt, five of their children, and a family corporation for exceeding the three-million-bushel limit on soybean futures through accounts in relatives' names, and the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit|Seventh Circuit]] ruled for the commission in 1979. That July the brothers formed the [[International Metals Investment Company]] in [[Bermuda]] with two Saudi partners. The group held about 200 million ounces of silver when the [[COMEX|Commodity Exchange]] restricted trading to liquidation on January 21, 1980. On March 27 the brothers could not meet their margin calls. A federal jury found in August 1988 that Herbert, Bunker, and [[Lamar Hunt]], the Saudi diplomat [[Mahmoud Fustok]], and the Bermuda company had manipulated the market, and that all but Lamar had engaged in racketeering. Judgment for the Peruvian company [[Minpeco]] exceeded 132 million dollars.[^1][^7][^8] ### Bankruptcy Placid Oil filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and Herbert Hunt personally in 1988. The brothers paid about 160 million dollars in 1994, most of it to the [[Internal Revenue Service]]. The 1936 trust in his name was beyond the reach of the creditors and held [[Petro-Hunt]], which he ran with his three sons. "After the January 1, 1990, settlement, I walked away with an IRS overhang for ten years," he said in 2001. Of his brother he said: "Bunker and I split up. It seemed like every time one of us got sued, the other got sued too, and we had to hire twice as many lawyers."[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gwynne, S.C. "Bunker Hunt," *Texas Monthly,* September 2001. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/bunker-hunt/ [^2]: "Iconic Wildcatter Herbert Hunt Passes Away," *AAPG Explorer,* 2024; obituary, *The Dallas Morning News,* April 14, 2024. [^3]: United States v. Hunt, 505 F.2d 931 (5th Cir. 1974). [^4]: Porterfield, Bill. "H.L. Hunt's Long Goodbye," *Texas Monthly,* March 1975. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/h-l-hunts-long-goodbye/ [^5]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Headquarters file on Paul M. Rothermel Jr. (FOIA release), DeLoach to Tolson, February 3, 1970. https://archive.org/details/RothermelJr.PaulM.HQ1 [^6]: McFadden, Robert D. "Nelson Bunker Hunt, 88, Oil Tycoon With a Texas-Size Presence, Dies," *The New York Times,* October 22, 2014. [^7]: Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Hunt, 591 F.2d 1211 (7th Cir. 1979). [^8]: Minpeco, S.A. v. Hunt, 718 F. Supp. 168 (S.D.N.Y. 1989); "Money: The Silver Trading Caper," *Reason,* June 1980. https://reason.com/1980/06/01/the-silver-trading-caper/