Billie Sol Estes (January 10, 1925 – May 14, 2013) was an American businessman and financier best known for his involvement in a business fraud scandal that complicated his ties to friend and future U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.

Estes worked out a method to purchase large numbers of cotton allotments by dealing with farmers who had been dispossessed of land through eminent domain.

He convinced the farmers to purchase land from him in Texas and transfer their allotments there, with a mortgage agreement delaying the first payment for a year.

Estes, however, a smooth talker revered by many of his fellow members of the Churches of Christ, asserted the allegations as politics.

[2] In 1962, after information came to light that Estes had paid off four Agriculture officials for grain storage contracts, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Justice Department and FBI to open investigations into Estes' activities and determine if Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman had also been "compromised" (Freeman was cleared).

His appeal hinged upon the alleged impossibility of a fair trial due to the presence of television cameras and broadcast journalists in the courtroom.

Oscar Griffin Jr., the journalist who uncovered the storage tank scandal, later received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for his articles for a weekly newspaper in Pecos, Texas.

To improve his 1961 candidacy for Reeves County school board, Estes offered the local newspaper large advertising buys in exchange for not opposing him.

"[6] Estes’ schemes were parodied in 1963 by Allan Sherman in the song Shticks of One and a Half a Dozen of the Other,[2][7] on his album, My Son, the Celebrity.

Eight days before being sworn in as Vice-President of the United States in 1961, Lyndon B. Johnson wrote to Estes, thanking him for the gift of some roses, writing, "It's wonderful to have friends like you.

[11][12] In 1984, he provided a voluntary statement to a grand jury in Texas alleging that the homicide of Henry Marshall, a key investigator in the Department of Agriculture case, was perpetrated by Malcolm Wallace, an aide to Johnson, upon orders from the then-Vice President.

[1] Estes reiterated the claim in JFK Le Dernier Témoin: Assassinat de Kennedy, Enfin La Vérité!