OAKLAND — The world of Frank Wishom was collapsing fast in 2003 when he started talking to the FBI.
The high-tech company he had nurtured for a decade was failing. The woman in his life for 20 years had dumped him. And his diabetes was flaring so severely he expected to lose his legs.
Then, after undergoing vein surgery in fall 2003, the 62-year-old businessman had a heart attack and died.
Whatever he said to the FBI remains a mystery, because officials refuse to talk about the federal investigation that now threatens California's new state Senate leader.
But Wishom's friends, relatives and associates -- some of whom have been contacted by FBI agents -- are convinced that his allegations about public corruption here figure in the probe.
The grand jury investigation is swirling around Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Wishom's ex-girlfriend, prominent Oakland lobbyist Lily Hu, who once worked as a Perata aide.
In November, subpoenas were issued seeking information about payments and communications involving Perata and more than a dozen people and companies associated with him, including his two grown children, his former business partner and Hu.
On Dec. 15, federal agents executed search warrants on the homes of Perata and his son, a political consultant who has worked on the senator's campaigns.
Perata has denied any wrongdoing and said that he was prepared to cooperate with investigators.
Hu's attorney, Doron Weinberg, said the investigation was triggered by baseless allegations raised by Wishom as a result of his breakup with Hu.
"Frank apparently was far off the deep end, acting irrationally and doing unreasonable things," Weinberg said. "In his mental state, he would have accused her of anything."
It was in the mid-1980s that Wishom began his relationship with Hu, a personable and hard-driving native of Taiwan. She and Wishom soon grew so close that some friends thought they were married.
For years, Hu had shared her upscale home with Wishom, a telecommunications contractor who wore $400 shoes, drove a big BMW, sailed a yacht and told people he once played football at nearby UC Berkeley.
The couple had been a fixture in this city's political and social life and threw lavish holiday parties with catered food.
