# The Salad Oil King of New Jersey: Tino De Angelis

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 18 Sep 2025, 52 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/b78cc4cc-44f1-42ec-b76e-b35b0142cece/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

The salad oil business is slippery stuff. Sometimes you have to grease some palms to get what you want. You have to be slick. And you have to trim the fat to keep your business profitable. Lubricating the cogs of international trade...okay, you get the picture. This guy dealt in oil and got himself into serious trouble. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio En Elizabeth.
[0:08] Speaker 2: How are you doing?
[0:09] Speaker 3: Yeah? You know fair too Midland? I how about you?
[0:12] Speaker 3: How you doing? Hanging in there?
[0:13] Speaker 2: All right?
[0:15] Speaker 3: You know it's ridiculous, Yes, Okay, My man's Seth Rogan.
[0:20] Speaker 3: You see, he got nominated for a bunch of Emmys
[0:22] Speaker 3: for a show The Studio. Yeah, love that show, you
[0:25] Speaker 3: love that show? Well, you know, he also was in
[0:28] Speaker 3: I listen to a lot of old radio, as you know,
[0:30] Speaker 3: and one of the old radio shows I like is
[0:32] Speaker 3: called The Green Hornet. He made a movie back in
[0:35] Speaker 3: the day for The Green Hornet. Yeah, not one of
[0:38] Speaker 3: his better movies. So I went to it. I of
[0:41] Speaker 3: course is supporting the idea, but it wasn't that.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Great anyway, report him in whatever time.
[0:45] Speaker 3: Oh my god. But what I found out recently was
[0:48] Speaker 3: there was almost a magical villain character in The Green Hornet.
[0:53] Speaker 3: It was well, guess guess who would I be the
[0:56] Speaker 3: most thrilled would be a villain in The Green Hornet.
[0:59] Speaker 3: It's an actor I've talked about many times on this show,
[1:02] Speaker 3: my potential new bestie.
[1:04] Speaker 2: Nicholas Cage.
[1:07] Speaker 3: No, but Seth Rogen apparently thought that Nicholas Cage was
[1:12] Speaker 3: not right for the part.
[1:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a little distracting.
[1:14] Speaker 3: But it wasn't. He thought he was right for the
[1:16] Speaker 3: part initially until he started talking to Nicholas Cage about it,
[1:19] Speaker 3: and then he was like, no, I don't know. So
[1:21] Speaker 3: the way he tells it, he recounts the conversation he
[1:24] Speaker 3: had about the possibility of him being in the New
[1:26] Speaker 3: Green Hornet movie, and Nicholas Cage was like, I want
[1:29] Speaker 3: to play a bald guy but have hair tattooed on
[1:31] Speaker 3: my head and big prosthetic lips.
[1:35] Speaker 2: And oh wow.
[1:36] Speaker 3: Seth Rugan's like all right, And Nicholas Cage was not done.
[1:39] Speaker 3: He's like, I want to do a voice like Edward
[1:41] Speaker 3: g Robinson and he was like, Seth Rogan's like okay,
[1:46] Speaker 3: and then he's not done yet. Actually, wait, maybe not
[1:49] Speaker 3: the tattooed tear. That's something I might want to do
[1:51] Speaker 3: in real life, so it might be weird if I
[1:53] Speaker 3: also do it in a movie. And Seth Rogan's like, yeah,
[1:57] Speaker 3: that might make it weird. Yeah, he puts it. We
[2:01] Speaker 3: called the studio and we're like, I'm not sure we're
[2:03] Speaker 3: going to find common ground here. He's come up with
[2:05] Speaker 3: weird ideas for Nicholas Cage, which is saying something. Yeah,
[2:10] Speaker 3: Nicholas Cage talked himself out of a part that it
[2:13] Speaker 3: was like, I think probably made it.
[2:15] Speaker 2: He liked the he he likes the idea of Nicholas Cage,
[2:19] Speaker 2: not Nicholas Cage.
[2:20] Speaker 3: I think a lot of people have that experience until
[2:22] Speaker 3: Nicholas Cage is right there in front of them, like,
[2:23] Speaker 3: oh he's always turned up like this. It's not just
[2:26] Speaker 3: he's doing an act. This really is the man. I
[2:29] Speaker 3: love him as you know.
[2:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I back to Seth Rogan, who I
[2:34] Speaker 2: love him? You haven't seen the studio so good? Oh
[2:38] Speaker 2: my god, yes, it's it's one of my favorite shows
[2:41] Speaker 2: of late Yeah.
[2:43] Speaker 3: Can I be really like, I don't know, sentimental and
[2:46] Speaker 3: like embarrassing. When I was back on Twitter, Seth Rogan
[2:50] Speaker 3: used to follow me and every time I ever liked
[2:51] Speaker 3: to tweet, I was like, we would make a couple
[2:53] Speaker 3: of days for me. I was like, wow, I funny
[2:55] Speaker 3: enough that Seth Rogan was like hell, yeah.
[2:57] Speaker 2: That's now and I have like six degree of separation.
[3:01] Speaker 3: Yeah. And also now I'm over social media, so all
[3:02] Speaker 3: I post is things where I try not to be
[3:04] Speaker 3: angry yet I don't beat that. I'm not funny, he
[3:06] Speaker 3: wore online. It's terrible.
[3:08] Speaker 2: Oh, Seth Rogan's still missing out. Uh do you know
[3:11] Speaker 2: what else is ridiculous?
[3:12] Speaker 3: Dude? I was hoping you did being.
[3:14] Speaker 2: A slippery little fellow. This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast
[3:41] Speaker 2: about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always
[3:46] Speaker 2: ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
[3:50] Speaker 2: Damn right, Abe Froeman Sausage King of Chicaga.
[3:55] Speaker 3: Remember that from How Could I Forget?
[3:57] Speaker 2: Good Stuff?
[3:58] Speaker 3: Good stuff? My sister? And I still you? Is that
[4:00] Speaker 3: in Chicago?
[4:00] Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, well I love that. Well I have for
[4:06] Speaker 2: you today the Tale of the Salad Oil King of
[4:10] Speaker 2: New Jersey.
[4:11] Speaker 3: The salad oil King. This guy's so way is he
[4:13] Speaker 3: like an olive oil reporter?
[4:14] Speaker 4: O guy?
[4:15] Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no.
[4:16] Speaker 3: No, he's not one of those guys.
[4:17] Speaker 2: No. Well, he's ridiculous, okay, and pulled such a ridiculously
[4:24] Speaker 2: massive con. It's impressive.
[4:26] Speaker 3: Oh I love that.
[4:27] Speaker 2: I'm talking about Anthony Diangelis.
[4:30] Speaker 3: Do not know that Tino?
[4:32] Speaker 2: Call me Tino?
[4:32] Speaker 3: Out of Anthony, they got Tino. Santino leads to Tino.
[4:36] Speaker 2: No Tino.
[4:37] Speaker 3: I like that.
[4:38] Speaker 2: He was born in nineteen fifteen, grew.
[4:40] Speaker 3: Up in the Bronx okay, oh good time to rhymes were.
[4:42] Speaker 2: Tough, Yeah, exactly, immigrant family from Italy. There were five kids,
[4:47] Speaker 2: cold Water Walk up. His dad worked on the railroad
[4:50] Speaker 2: all the livelong day for real. Yeah, that was his job.
[4:53] Speaker 2: And like many children of immigrants, Tino had to go
[4:56] Speaker 2: to work early. He didn't have the luxury or of
[4:58] Speaker 2: higher education.
[4:59] Speaker 3: And you don't mean early in the day, I mean
[5:00] Speaker 3: early in his life.
[5:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, although not as early as some He when he
[5:04] Speaker 2: was seventeen he left school, so that's he got to
[5:07] Speaker 2: stay longer than like my grandpa did.
[5:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, he made it to high school and almost through
[5:12] Speaker 3: high schools exactly.
[5:14] Speaker 2: He got a job as a meat cutter with City
[5:17] Speaker 2: Provision Company in New York City.
[5:19] Speaker 3: So like a bulk butcher basically.
[5:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, within a couple of years he was
[5:23] Speaker 2: the manager there. He oversaw two hundred something dudes. Yeah,
[5:28] Speaker 2: Tino the knife, he told the He told this Saturday
[5:32] Speaker 2: Evening Post in nineteen sixty four, quote, I had an
[5:35] Speaker 2: exceptional ability in knowing how to process hogs. Some of
[5:40] Speaker 2: my methods like cutting hogs while moving cut the cost
[5:44] Speaker 2: of processing hogs enormously.
[5:46] Speaker 3: Check out Henry Ford over here, I mean for real.
[5:48] Speaker 2: So he did this for a few years and then
[5:50] Speaker 2: he struck out on his own. He opened his own
[5:53] Speaker 2: meat butchering company. And he'd saved two thousand dollars for that,
[5:57] Speaker 2: which is about forty.
[5:58] Speaker 3: Five thousand today chunk of chain.
[6:00] Speaker 2: Is not too shabby but it still wasn't enough. So
[6:03] Speaker 2: he got a loan for ten grand, that's like the
[6:06] Speaker 2: equivalent of two hundred and thirty thousand dollars today. But
[6:10] Speaker 2: the business was a success. It took off. He was
[6:13] Speaker 2: pulling in money like no one could believe. One hundred
[6:16] Speaker 2: thousand dollars after one year, three hundred thousand after three years.
[6:21] Speaker 2: He's just raking it in. So by the time World
[6:23] Speaker 2: War two started, business is booming. He was the big
[6:27] Speaker 2: dog in the New York meat business. And in fact,
[6:30] Speaker 2: that's how he was able to avoid serving in World
[6:32] Speaker 2: War two.
[6:33] Speaker 3: Oh, because he's like an essential US He dodged.
[6:36] Speaker 2: The draft because his company was a major supplier of
[6:39] Speaker 2: pork to the US Army.
[6:40] Speaker 3: The love pork.
[6:41] Speaker 2: Then in the army he had to be there to
[6:43] Speaker 2: oversee the business that was his contribution.
[6:46] Speaker 3: To the war totally. He was a logistics man exactly.
[6:48] Speaker 2: So for many industries, war is good for business for
[6:52] Speaker 2: many many and this was true for Tino. He was
[6:55] Speaker 2: making money hand over fist. Now, there there were some
[6:58] Speaker 2: who said that his success was thinking to black market
[7:00] Speaker 2: meat sales. Oh, he was never charged or busted for that.
[7:05] Speaker 2: And by the time the war ended, nobody cared.
[7:07] Speaker 3: Oh, they didn't call him war profit.
[7:08] Speaker 2: Heers, No, nobody cared at that point. He had cash,
[7:11] Speaker 2: He took care of people. He had a million dollars
[7:14] Speaker 2: set aside for his family. Quote in case anything ever happened,
[7:19] Speaker 2: It's like eighteen million today stashed somewhere.
[7:21] Speaker 3: In case anything happened. I'd like to have at least
[7:24] Speaker 3: half of that for anything.
[7:24] Speaker 2: That A million dollars stash somewhere for rainy day fund.
[7:29] Speaker 2: Pretty nice. So while we didn't have shortages of food
[7:33] Speaker 2: here in the States at that time, they for sure
[7:36] Speaker 2: had shortages all across.
[7:37] Speaker 3: Europe total, especially Italy.
[7:39] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, factories and farms leveled, a generation of workers killed.
[7:43] Speaker 2: Supply chain logistics are a total mess. Enter Tino. Nineteen
[7:48] Speaker 2: forty seven, he won a contract with the government of
[7:51] Speaker 2: Yugoslavia oh, for a million dollars.
[7:54] Speaker 3: Tito liked his height. He took Tito and hand in hand.
[7:59] Speaker 2: So what were they gonna buy from him?
[8:01] Speaker 3: Were they gonna buy? Elizabeth?
[8:02] Speaker 2: I love when you ask good questions. Lard, Oh, the
[8:06] Speaker 2: basics of cooking. You have salt, fat, acid, heat. Shout
[8:09] Speaker 2: out to Samine Masrot. You gotta have the fat if
[8:12] Speaker 2: you're gonna eat and keep people alive. So per the
[8:16] Speaker 2: book The Great Salad Oil Swindle by Norman Miller, quote,
[8:21] Speaker 2: according to Tino he made lifelong friends among the Yugoslavs
[8:24] Speaker 2: by this deal. The record shows otherwise.
[8:28] Speaker 3: Oh d wait. If you were asking yugoslav at that time,
[8:32] Speaker 3: they're like, we have a much different version of that book.
[8:35] Speaker 2: But by the way, is based on Miller's coverage of
[8:37] Speaker 2: Tino in the Wall Street Journal, and that eventually won
[8:40] Speaker 2: him a Pulletz serprise. Here's the thing. When the Yugoslavs
[8:46] Speaker 2: got the shipment of lard, it was not primo grease.
[8:50] Speaker 2: It was subpar. Their bits in it, I don't know.
[8:54] Speaker 2: It was an insult in essence. So they complained to
[8:58] Speaker 2: Tino and then they sue to get their money back.
[9:01] Speaker 3: We want that good grease.
[9:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, give me the good snicks. Tino paid him one
[9:05] Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars to settle. Okay, like, fine, take the
[9:09] Speaker 2: bad grease. Here's one hundred grand, get out of my face.
[9:12] Speaker 2: So with that behind him, at Tino set his sights
[9:15] Speaker 2: on expansion. Nineteen forty nine, he got control of a
[9:19] Speaker 2: publicly traded company called aid Off Goeble Company. It was
[9:22] Speaker 2: a meat packing firm in New Jersey, Adolf and Gobel
[9:25] Speaker 2: aido Off Geoble, and he declared himself president. Okay, like
[9:29] Speaker 2: look at me. Then he landed a sweet contract with
[9:32] Speaker 2: the federal National School Lunch Program. Oh no, so he
[9:36] Speaker 2: would be supplying eighteen point nine million pounds of smoked
[9:41] Speaker 2: meat to be distributed in school cafeterias all across the country.
[9:45] Speaker 3: BA sausages for everybody, jam for days. Yeah, He's like,
[9:48] Speaker 3: do you like blogei? Do you like hot dog pancakes?
[9:51] Speaker 3: We've got blog for your kids.
[9:53] Speaker 2: There it is feeding school kids. That's a good American.
[9:56] Speaker 2: He's building a better tomorrow. But it seems like he
[10:00] Speaker 2: didn't think any more highly of the Americans than he
[10:02] Speaker 2: did of the Yugoslavia.
[10:04] Speaker 3: He's a good businessman.
[10:05] Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty two, the US government sued Tino. Seems
[10:10] Speaker 2: he sold subpar goods. Again the meat was so bad
[10:14] Speaker 2: they couldn't use it.
[10:15] Speaker 3: Oh wow.
[10:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, and more than two million pounds of meat that
[10:18] Speaker 2: were were uninspected, just in general.
[10:21] Speaker 3: So he's like sweeping the factory floor and just got
[10:23] Speaker 3: business for the case.
[10:24] Speaker 2: It's the bits, the scrap and the bits and so
[10:26] Speaker 2: like some didn't even go into inspection. They're like, we
[10:29] Speaker 2: can't even use this if it was good, but we
[10:31] Speaker 2: didn't bother.
[10:31] Speaker 3: We can smell check it. This is not good.
[10:33] Speaker 2: And then only that he overcharged the government by three
[10:37] Speaker 2: hundred and thirty seven, three hundred and seventy six dollars.
[10:40] Speaker 2: Oh okay, I thought you're gonna say percent no, like
[10:43] Speaker 2: you know, almost three hundred and forty grand. Yeah, he
[10:45] Speaker 2: overstated the weight of various shipments and that's but you
[10:48] Speaker 2: know what that equivalent is today four point one million dollars.
[10:52] Speaker 2: Like you you overcharged for four point you to the
[10:55] Speaker 2: government for the school kids, for the children's Tino. He
[10:59] Speaker 2: set that one out of court too. He paid a
[11:02] Speaker 2: million dollar fine.
[11:03] Speaker 3: Okay, I was just about asking no fine, no fees.
[11:05] Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And then his company that ate off Goebel
[11:08] Speaker 2: declared bankruptcy in nineteen fifty three and the board of
[11:12] Speaker 2: directors fired him.
[11:13] Speaker 3: That's going to happen, how you go.
[11:15] Speaker 2: And just to make sure he was spreading the pain
[11:17] Speaker 2: on both sides of the conflict. In May of fifty four,
[11:21] Speaker 2: the German government said it had also gotten inferior lard
[11:24] Speaker 2: from another of his companies.
[11:26] Speaker 3: Wow.
[11:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, So the US government investigated this found the accusations true.
[11:31] Speaker 2: Tino had to pay damages. Again, He's like.
[11:34] Speaker 3: What you don't like my lin he walks into the court.
[11:37] Speaker 2: Judges like you again, right, So he had to diversify
[11:40] Speaker 2: at this point. Yeah, So in nineteen fifty five he
[11:42] Speaker 2: chartered Allied Crude Vegetable Oil and Refining Corporation. Okay, that
[11:47] Speaker 2: is such a fifties corporation.
[11:49] Speaker 3: Made, yes, and a fifty like a fake win where
[11:51] Speaker 3: you're trying to like hide what you do, try to
[11:53] Speaker 3: sound like the other guys.
[11:54] Speaker 2: Yes, this would be an exporter doing business with foreign
[11:59] Speaker 2: country trees through aid programs that were arranged by the
[12:03] Speaker 2: Commodity Credit Corporation of the US government. And so Tino
[12:07] Speaker 2: leaned way into this. He made Allied Crude like the
[12:12] Speaker 2: dominant player in soybean oil and in cottonseed features. Wow, okay,
[12:18] Speaker 2: so Allied seed oils, Allied crude they traded, and basically
[12:22] Speaker 2: vegetable oil. Yeah exactly, And he was like aggressive in
[12:25] Speaker 2: expanding his company's steak in these markets. So by the
[12:29] Speaker 2: end of the fifties he was responsible. Tino was responsible
[12:32] Speaker 2: for three quarters of all edible oil shipped to Europe
[12:37] Speaker 2: Tino alone.
[12:38] Speaker 4: Damn.
[12:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like that guy's responsible for all the cheese
[12:41] Speaker 3: on frozen cheese pizzas me. That's crazy.
[12:45] Speaker 2: Yeah. So he had figured out that there was this
[12:48] Speaker 2: fortune to be made from two government programs, farm price
[12:52] Speaker 2: supports and foreign aid. So there just so happened to
[12:56] Speaker 2: be a huge soybean surplus in the US at the time,
[12:59] Speaker 2: and his land was to buy up as many of
[13:01] Speaker 2: the beans as he could, process it all into soybean
[13:05] Speaker 2: oil and then ship the stuff overseas on government contracts.
[13:09] Speaker 2: Yeah I know, because there's the subsidies at home, and
[13:11] Speaker 2: he gets that, yeah exactly, and like he could pick
[13:15] Speaker 2: up some private contracts too. Soybean oil wasn't just for
[13:19] Speaker 2: human consumption. It was commonly called salad oil, but it
[13:23] Speaker 2: had industrial applications, like you could use it in paint
[13:26] Speaker 2: and stuff, so there was a high demand for.
[13:28] Speaker 3: It, a replacement for lindseed oil.
[13:30] Speaker 2: Yes, so Tino got to work. Between nineteen fifty eight
[13:34] Speaker 2: and nineteen sixty two he developed out this enormous salad
[13:38] Speaker 2: oil refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey. He leased one hundred
[13:43] Speaker 2: and thirty nine oil storage tanks for the place and
[13:46] Speaker 2: like massive tank Yeah refiners, some were like five stories tough.
[13:51] Speaker 2: He wasn't, of course, the only guy in the game.
[13:53] Speaker 2: There were other oily sorts who wanted in on this
[13:56] Speaker 2: cash cow, but Tino had plans for that too. He
[13:59] Speaker 2: paid way is high above his competitors, and his bids
[14:03] Speaker 2: to the government were always the very lowest. It's not
[14:06] Speaker 2: really a recipe for success in most cases.
[14:08] Speaker 3: Most times it doesn't work.
[14:09] Speaker 2: No, But by nineteen sixty two, Allied Crude was responsible
[14:13] Speaker 2: for three quarters of the US exports of soybean and
[14:16] Speaker 2: cotton seat oil.
[14:17] Speaker 3: That's when he made his profits.
[14:19] Speaker 2: Yes, do you know how much that is in volume?
[14:21] Speaker 2: Seventy five percent?
[14:23] Speaker 3: I was about ask Elizabeth, how much is that in
[14:25] Speaker 3: say volume?
[14:26] Speaker 2: Thank you? Three hundred and sixty one million pounds. It's
[14:30] Speaker 2: a lot of oil.
[14:31] Speaker 3: That is a bunch of oil.
[14:33] Speaker 2: You know what. I always like to say, Yeah, takes
[14:35] Speaker 2: money to make money.
[14:37] Speaker 3: Oh, they're gonna say, are you going to wear those pants?
[14:39] Speaker 2: I say that too, I say, well, when you're wearing pants.
[14:42] Speaker 2: So he was buying season, he's using money to make money.
[14:48] Speaker 2: So he's buying up bean.
[14:49] Speaker 3: Cornered in the market.
[14:50] Speaker 2: He's buying his workers, well, giving the US government sweet deals.
[14:54] Speaker 2: If he expanded enough, though, he could make that profitable.
[14:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, very profit.
[15:00] Speaker 2: But he needed to finance this quick expansion, you know,
[15:05] Speaker 2: get that money in as fast as he could. So
[15:07] Speaker 2: he got these massive loans and he used the oil
[15:09] Speaker 2: as collateral. You can do that apparently. So on top
[15:13] Speaker 2: of all this, Allied Crude had a really strong relationship
[15:17] Speaker 2: with a strong company.
[15:18] Speaker 3: By the way, I would love to go into a
[15:19] Speaker 3: bank and talk to a bank manager and go I'd
[15:21] Speaker 3: like to get a very large loan of money. They're like,
[15:23] Speaker 3: what do you have. I'm like, I've got these boatloads
[15:26] Speaker 3: of oils, you guys, seed oils possibly a collateral, Yeah, totally.
[15:31] Speaker 2: Well, this is what let me tell you why they
[15:33] Speaker 2: signed on American Express. What so, Allied Crude had ties
[15:39] Speaker 2: with American Express that gave it a positive reputation, and
[15:42] Speaker 2: it wasn't because they ran around with AMEX cards, because see,
[15:46] Speaker 2: American Express had a warehousing division. In nineteen fifty eighteen,
[15:50] Speaker 2: oh went to American Express and asked about borrowing money
[15:54] Speaker 2: on his oil. He gave the old Razzle Dazzle, the
[15:56] Speaker 2: old Bobby Dazzler, and he did the hard sell on
[15:59] Speaker 2: his setup. According to him, he had the most modern
[16:03] Speaker 2: vegetable oil refinery ever built. This baby could take in
[16:07] Speaker 2: three million pounds of crude salad oil a day. That
[16:09] Speaker 2: yellow gold. So AMEX, they're all.
[16:12] Speaker 3: About it, right, sweet sweet yellow.
[16:14] Speaker 2: In nineteen forty four, they had introduced a new service.
[16:19] Speaker 2: They wanted to get bankers really pushing their travelers checks.
[16:22] Speaker 2: Do you remember when those were a thing? It was
[16:24] Speaker 2: like big for international travel, pre electronic credit or debit cards.
[16:29] Speaker 2: So each check was like for a pre printed fixed
[16:31] Speaker 2: round amount of like one of a bunch of different
[16:34] Speaker 2: major world currencies. So if you're going to France, you'd
[16:37] Speaker 2: get one for like one hundred francs each or whatever,
[16:39] Speaker 2: and it was more reliable than like a random check
[16:42] Speaker 2: from a random bank in another country. Yeah, and MX
[16:45] Speaker 2: is good for it, everyone knows so in exchange for
[16:48] Speaker 2: bankers pushing these checks on people, AMEX started offering supplemental
[16:53] Speaker 2: services that would be appealing to the finance set. They
[16:56] Speaker 2: started American express Warehousing Company. They would store, inspect, and
[17:02] Speaker 2: vouch for stuff like the oil that commodities dealers were
[17:05] Speaker 2: using as collateral for their bank loans. So, after all,
[17:09] Speaker 2: everyone knew, you know, AMEX is good for it.
[17:11] Speaker 3: I totally don't understand high finance where you can bring
[17:14] Speaker 3: seed oil into this like, oh, yeah, that's great.
[17:16] Speaker 2: Well, it's a it. You know, that's your it is
[17:18] Speaker 2: a commodity.
[17:19] Speaker 3: I get it. It's a yeah.
[17:20] Speaker 2: Well and you can see like.
[17:21] Speaker 3: Frozen orange juice and pork bellies.
[17:23] Speaker 2: Right right. So Tino he paid American express Warehousing twenty
[17:27] Speaker 2: thousand dollars a week for their services. Okay, part of
[17:30] Speaker 2: the services were inspections to attest to the amount of
[17:34] Speaker 2: oil in each tank.
[17:35] Speaker 3: All right, go put like the dipstick in.
[17:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what made the institutions cutting these loans
[17:39] Speaker 2: feel confident and Tino he was able to get more
[17:42] Speaker 2: loans based on his connection with AMEX. So he picked
[17:46] Speaker 2: up money from Bunch Limited, Daily Procter, and Gamble Bank
[17:50] Speaker 2: of America. In all, he had loans out with fifty
[17:54] Speaker 2: one different companies. Wow, yeah, everybody lends all aware of it.
[18:00] Speaker 2: The No, there was one problem, only one, one very big.
[18:07] Speaker 2: There was one very big problem. Tino didn't have all
[18:10] Speaker 2: that oil. Of course, he never did. He had the
[18:14] Speaker 2: paperwork for it, and he had the attestations that the
[18:17] Speaker 2: oil was in the tanks, but not the oil itself.
[18:20] Speaker 2: Oh oily, mother, Let's take a break. When we come back,
[18:24] Speaker 2: let's find that oil.
[18:25] Speaker 5: Was Elizabeth So Tino and his oil it so American Express.
[18:52] Speaker 2: They would send inspectors out to the tanks to check
[18:55] Speaker 2: on the stock of oil. Okay, I want you to
[18:57] Speaker 2: close your eye. Oh yes, and I want you to
[19:01] Speaker 2: picture it. You are eighteen years old. You're a young
[19:09] Speaker 2: guy in New Jersey. You've just got a job thanks
[19:12] Speaker 2: to your uncle Giuseppe.
[19:14] Speaker 3: He knew a guy.
[19:15] Speaker 2: He got your cousin a job there last year. It's
[19:17] Speaker 2: a good gig, easy, and that's how you find yourself
[19:20] Speaker 2: staring out across Kill Van Kull, a tidal strait that
[19:24] Speaker 2: separates you in Bayonne, New Jersey, with stat mile seagulls
[19:28] Speaker 2: reel and dive in the air overhead as a forklift
[19:31] Speaker 2: makes its way to a warehouse behind you, Your cousin
[19:34] Speaker 2: calls you over to a small manager's shed. It's dwarfed
[19:37] Speaker 2: by giant wide cylinders. They're easily one hundred feet tall.
[19:42] Speaker 2: Inside the shed, a radio plays a Dean Martin tune,
[19:45] Speaker 2: but your cousin is standing outside holding a clipboard. He
[19:48] Speaker 2: tells you that the two of you are going to
[19:50] Speaker 2: be helping some inspectors today. They want to know how
[19:53] Speaker 2: much of this salad oil is in the tanks. Sounds good,
[19:56] Speaker 2: he tells you. The two of you will have to
[19:58] Speaker 2: climb to the top of these things. You stare up
[20:01] Speaker 2: at the closest tank, marveling at the sky above it.
[20:04] Speaker 2: The Atlantic Ocean's wind, whipping up from the Caribbean along
[20:08] Speaker 2: the warm southern coast on its way up to Canada
[20:10] Speaker 2: and Greenland and then Northern Europe, reaches like fingers through
[20:14] Speaker 2: the various bays, inlets and kills, pushing wispy clouds high
[20:19] Speaker 2: in the sky over your head. The juxtaposition of the
[20:22] Speaker 2: heavy industry surrounding you, oil tanks, rumbling trucks, and vast
[20:27] Speaker 2: warehouses and distant brick factories, and then the gentle rolling
[20:31] Speaker 2: hills over the kill to Staten Island. The graceful seabirds,
[20:34] Speaker 2: the open sky, the warm sun on your face. It's overwhelming.
[20:38] Speaker 2: The cousin clears his throat, looks at you with a grimace.
[20:41] Speaker 2: Heads up, he tells you they're here. A truck pulls
[20:44] Speaker 2: up and two men step out. They're both a bit
[20:46] Speaker 2: older and carry a good bit of weight. They're wearing
[20:49] Speaker 2: blue work jumpsuits with American express warehousing stitched on a
[20:53] Speaker 2: stiff patch on their breastpockets. They walk stiffly your way.
[20:57] Speaker 2: They like your cousin, hold clipboards. Your cousin reaches into
[21:01] Speaker 2: the shed, tossing his clipboard onto a desk. Then he
[21:04] Speaker 2: grabs a giant weighted tape measure and approaches the men,
[21:08] Speaker 2: with Dino still crooning in the background. They all greet
[21:10] Speaker 2: each other. Your cousin introduces you. Then he says, you're
[21:14] Speaker 2: that Dean Martin singing. He's got nothing on my cousin. Here,
[21:18] Speaker 2: my cousin, he is the voice. One day we'll all
[21:21] Speaker 2: know about him. You blush and shuffle your feet. You're
[21:24] Speaker 2: known in your family and the neighborhood. Is quite the singer,
[21:27] Speaker 2: a real voice. Your cousin motions for you to follow him,
[21:30] Speaker 2: and you' all head out towards the nearest tank. At
[21:33] Speaker 2: the base of the tank, one of the men says
[21:35] Speaker 2: that climbing up there is young men's work. The other
[21:37] Speaker 2: man chuckles. Your cousin tells you that the two of
[21:40] Speaker 2: you will scale the ladder to the top of the tank.
[21:42] Speaker 2: He'll go to the very top in the middle, you'll
[21:44] Speaker 2: stay at the edge. He'll drop the tape measure in
[21:47] Speaker 2: and get a filled percentage. He'll then shout it to you,
[21:50] Speaker 2: and you'll in turn shout it down to the men.
[21:52] Speaker 2: The two of you will repeat this on five or
[21:54] Speaker 2: six other tanks. Then you can probably call it a day.
[21:57] Speaker 2: It's ten am. This is a good gig. You and
[22:00] Speaker 2: your cousin scale the metal ladder, running up the side
[22:03] Speaker 2: of the tank. He drops the measuring tape in. The
[22:06] Speaker 2: two of you weight in silence until you hear the
[22:08] Speaker 2: dull thud of the weight hitting the very bottom of
[22:10] Speaker 2: the tank. Your cousin shines a flashlight into the hole
[22:13] Speaker 2: and reads the tape ninety percent full. He yells, ninety
[22:18] Speaker 2: percent fall. You yell down to the men.
[22:21] Speaker 3: One of them.
[22:21] Speaker 2: Scribbles on his clipboard while the other gives you a
[22:23] Speaker 2: thumbs up. You and your cousin descend, and then repeat
[22:26] Speaker 2: the process a few more times. When you're done and
[22:29] Speaker 2: watching the men cutter away in their truck, your cousin
[22:31] Speaker 2: turns to you. You both stand in the shade of
[22:34] Speaker 2: one of those enormous tanks. Can I tell you something?
[22:37] Speaker 2: He asks? Sure? You tell him there's no oil in
[22:40] Speaker 2: those tanks. I thought you said there were ninety percent full.
[22:44] Speaker 2: You tell him that when the weight hit the bottom,
[22:46] Speaker 2: it certainly didn't sound empty.
[22:48] Speaker 4: Nah.
[22:48] Speaker 2: He tells you it's a racket. And the only reason
[22:51] Speaker 2: I'm telling you is at one of these days you're
[22:54] Speaker 2: going to have to do the measuring or the moving.
[22:57] Speaker 2: The moving. You ask, oh, you got a lot to learn,
[23:00] Speaker 2: He tells you, the moving, the moving. So, Saren, let
[23:05] Speaker 2: me tell you how this all wr was.
[23:06] Speaker 3: Please.
[23:07] Speaker 2: So the workers they're telling the inspectors that the tanks
[23:09] Speaker 2: are basically full, and they were with water, so they'd
[23:13] Speaker 2: put like a foot or so of oil on top
[23:16] Speaker 2: of that water in case someone wanted a sample a scoop. Yeah,
[23:19] Speaker 2: But a lot of the tanks didn't have anything in
[23:21] Speaker 2: them at all, and they were connected by this like
[23:24] Speaker 2: absolute maze of pipes, and if there was an inspection
[23:27] Speaker 2: scheduled for the week ahead, the workers would slip into
[23:30] Speaker 2: the facility on a Sunday afternoon because there was like
[23:33] Speaker 2: not a lot of security. They'd pump oil or like
[23:36] Speaker 2: oil and water from one tank to another, and from
[23:39] Speaker 2: one that had been like recently inspected to one that
[23:41] Speaker 2: was due for inspection. So that's how they move it.
[23:44] Speaker 2: This way. There's infinite oil in the tanks. And according
[23:47] Speaker 2: to the paperwork that's you know what it says, infinite
[23:50] Speaker 2: oil means infinite funding. So you could take out almost unlimited.
[23:55] Speaker 3: Loans on this against the oil.
[23:56] Speaker 2: It's endless collateral. Yeah, And so the lenders they weren't
[24:00] Speaker 2: checking with each other as to who's lending on what.
[24:02] Speaker 2: When it came to the tanks was yeah. And then
[24:05] Speaker 2: once Tino had loans out on three times as much
[24:09] Speaker 2: oil as the tanks could hold. So he was keeping
[24:13] Speaker 2: it all together though, right at least where that grift
[24:16] Speaker 2: was concerned. So in the early sixties, Tino had another company,
[24:20] Speaker 2: the Shortening Company of America Shortenings. Oh yeah, he cut
[24:25] Speaker 2: a lot of corners on that one. As told in
[24:27] Speaker 2: the Great Salad Oil Swindle quote, the shiny cans of
[24:31] Speaker 2: oil packed by Shortening Corporation with the words donated by
[24:35] Speaker 2: the people of the United States of America stamp proudly
[24:38] Speaker 2: on them, were to lead to one of Tino's more
[24:41] Speaker 2: memorable escapades. As the cans of oil arrived overseas, they
[24:45] Speaker 2: started springing leaks. Before long, warehouses from Brazil to India
[24:49] Speaker 2: were a wash in rancid salad oil. Yeah. So he
[24:56] Speaker 2: said that he was using heavy duty tins and he
[24:59] Speaker 2: charged them for that. But this is Tino. He was
[25:02] Speaker 2: using really cheap containers. They leak, they broke, really easily
[25:07] Speaker 2: falls out.
[25:08] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[25:09] Speaker 2: When it came to his salad oil scam, no one
[25:11] Speaker 2: could figure out how he was able to make the
[25:13] Speaker 2: money he was making by buying the soybeans at the
[25:17] Speaker 2: high prices he was and then selling the oil on
[25:19] Speaker 2: the cheap. So like rumors started to circulate. Some said
[25:23] Speaker 2: that Tino was running a mob front and he was
[25:26] Speaker 2: washing dirty vice money in salad oil.
[25:28] Speaker 3: Sure.
[25:29] Speaker 2: Now, while there was never any proof of this, I
[25:31] Speaker 2: will say that one of his co owners of a
[25:34] Speaker 2: Chicago refinery was Herman Topel, and Herman Topel had previously
[25:39] Speaker 2: been an owner of another fat rendering company called Twin Foods.
[25:43] Speaker 2: So back to the Great Salad Oil Swindle book quote,
[25:47] Speaker 2: this outfit had been put out of business by Chicago
[25:50] Speaker 2: police after they discovered that among the company's stockholders were
[25:54] Speaker 2: five mob figures who'd been identified by the Senate Rackets
[25:57] Speaker 2: Committee as members of the Cosa Nostra. The police said
[26:01] Speaker 2: at least five other Cosa Nostra hoodlums were employed by
[26:04] Speaker 2: Twin Foods, and they weren't spending their time rendering fat.
[26:07] Speaker 2: Twin Foods was a headquarters for quote, loan sharking, and
[26:11] Speaker 2: then the book says the lending of mob money at
[26:14] Speaker 2: usurist interest rates, arson plots, and the fencing of stolen goods.
[26:18] Speaker 2: The police suspected moreover, that the activities at Twin Foods
[26:22] Speaker 2: extended into murder.
[26:23] Speaker 3: I was wondering, if he's like down with like crazy
[26:25] Speaker 3: Joe Banano in the Chicago outfit New York, New.
[26:29] Speaker 2: Jersey, Right, so we have Herman Topel is the owner
[26:33] Speaker 2: of Twin Foods. Twin Foods gets shut down, Topel goes
[26:36] Speaker 2: to work with Tino. Of course, I mean, it's not
[26:39] Speaker 2: definitive proof, but come on.
[26:40] Speaker 3: But it is kind of an indictment. It's damming with allegations.
[26:44] Speaker 2: Association will say exactly, and you you are who you
[26:48] Speaker 2: associate with.
[26:49] Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
[26:50] Speaker 2: So meanwhile, people were starting to speak up. So in
[26:53] Speaker 2: nineteen sixty Donald Miller, CEO of American Express Warehousing, he
[26:58] Speaker 2: got a call from a tips to later referred to
[27:01] Speaker 2: as the voice.
[27:03] Speaker 3: Woo, here's a callback it is.
[27:06] Speaker 2: The voice said that he worked the night shift at
[27:08] Speaker 2: Allied in Bayone, New Jersey, late a seconds. Could you
[27:12] Speaker 2: wrap them out? The voice told Miller, quote, the biggest
[27:16] Speaker 2: hoax ever pulled is being pulled on American Express because
[27:20] Speaker 2: there is in fact water in the tanks, and we
[27:22] Speaker 2: are counting it as oil. Whenever we went to take
[27:25] Speaker 2: inventory at the tank, we would be dropping the weight
[27:27] Speaker 2: into this metal chamber which was filled with soybean oil,
[27:30] Speaker 2: but the balance of the tank had water in it.
[27:33] Speaker 2: So the voice told Miller that one of Allied's large
[27:36] Speaker 2: tanks had quote a metal chamber of some kind which
[27:40] Speaker 2: went from the top of the tank to the bottom
[27:42] Speaker 2: of the tank. It was under the hole where you
[27:44] Speaker 2: would normally drop a bomb, meaning the sampling device to
[27:47] Speaker 2: determine the quality of the contents of the tank. Whenever
[27:50] Speaker 2: we went to take inventory in that tank. He said,
[27:53] Speaker 2: we would be dropping the bomb down this metal chamber
[27:55] Speaker 2: which was filled with soybean oil. But the balance of
[27:58] Speaker 2: the tank had water in it.
[28:00] Speaker 3: Like a column right the whole year check So you
[28:04] Speaker 3: can drop the weight all the way down through oil,
[28:05] Speaker 3: through oil. The rest of the tank is I love that.
[28:08] Speaker 3: I may never have turned pro as a singer, but
[28:10] Speaker 3: I definitely did sing.
[28:11] Speaker 2: You did you did? You got a voice, sonya. So
[28:14] Speaker 2: Miller he had to act, and he had that quickly.
[28:17] Speaker 2: So he demanded a surprise inspection. When the inspectors got there,
[28:21] Speaker 2: they discovered that all the tank openings were welded shut
[28:25] Speaker 2: except except for the measuring hatch. And they so they
[28:29] Speaker 2: couldn't get oil in there if they tried. And then
[28:32] Speaker 2: when they could actually check five of the tanks, and
[28:35] Speaker 2: they were full of water, but not always full of water.
[28:38] Speaker 2: So in the twenty four foot tanks.
[28:40] Speaker 3: Want to waste the water in twenty four foot.
[28:42] Speaker 2: Tanks, they had between like one and eight feet of water.
[28:45] Speaker 2: I mean, there's bound to be some water in these tanks.
[28:48] Speaker 2: Six inches was the acceptable amount. They were running up
[28:52] Speaker 2: to eight feet and so the inspectors they came back
[28:55] Speaker 2: after the weekend because they went like on you know,
[28:57] Speaker 2: Friday or whatever. They come back at the end of
[28:59] Speaker 2: the and by that time there's nothing suspicious in the
[29:02] Speaker 2: other tanks. The final report said that all the water
[29:06] Speaker 2: was due to quote broken steam pipes, and then business
[29:09] Speaker 2: between Allied and American Express continued uninterrupted. Are you kidding No,
[29:13] Speaker 2: I'm not kidding you. Here. Here's the thing. When a
[29:17] Speaker 2: guy stopped working for Tino and Allied most of the time,
[29:21] Speaker 2: his new gig would be as an American Express field
[29:24] Speaker 2: warehousing custodians, and they held the keys to the crazy
[29:29] Speaker 2: mess of pipes that connected the tanks like that were
[29:31] Speaker 2: both above and below ground these pipes. When inspectors came
[29:35] Speaker 2: that particular week, the workers just shifted the oil that
[29:39] Speaker 2: was in the supply from tank to tank, keeping one
[29:41] Speaker 2: step ahead the whole time, and the inspectors were none
[29:44] Speaker 2: the wiser. So by the end of the inspection week,
[29:46] Speaker 2: the inspectors they sign off even with that explanation for
[29:50] Speaker 2: extra water. Oh, we had a pipe burst. The welded openings,
[29:54] Speaker 2: yeah that was you know, we figured that out. So everything.
[29:58] Speaker 2: So around this time, Tino he's buying heavily in the
[30:01] Speaker 2: oil's futures market. And you know that's not risky. No
[30:06] Speaker 2: futures markets.
[30:07] Speaker 3: Oh, I'm making the space over here.
[30:09] Speaker 2: In August of nineteen sixty one, the Spanish government ordered
[30:14] Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy five million pounds of soybean oil
[30:17] Speaker 2: from Allied.
[30:18] Speaker 3: Huh.
[30:18] Speaker 2: It was the biggest single order of Tino's career.
[30:22] Speaker 3: Was there any reason for this?
[30:24] Speaker 2: Well, I'll get to that. So this is wheth thirty
[30:26] Speaker 2: six and a half million dollars today. That's a three
[30:29] Speaker 2: hundred and ninety four million dollars deal. Whoa right? And
[30:34] Speaker 2: that's when the soybean oil futures market came in handy.
[30:38] Speaker 2: So Tino or put in a heavy order on that,
[30:41] Speaker 2: and he only had because he only had fifty million
[30:44] Speaker 2: pounds of oil in the American express field warehousing tanks.
[30:48] Speaker 2: There's no way he could fill the order with that,
[30:51] Speaker 2: so it made sense to buy the futures. He went
[30:53] Speaker 2: in big. But then something happened. Let's pause there, let's
[30:57] Speaker 2: order some soybeans, and when we come back, I will
[31:00] Speaker 2: be charitable and tell you what the bad thing is,
[31:23] Speaker 2: zaren saren. So we have Tino unable to fulfill the
[31:29] Speaker 2: Spanish order from his New Jersey tanks. So he buys
[31:32] Speaker 2: heavily in soybean futures. And then the Spanish government decided
[31:37] Speaker 2: it didn't want the soybean oil. After all, they had
[31:40] Speaker 2: not paid the contract. It was all still in talks.
[31:43] Speaker 2: So Tino he's positive he knew what happened. He's like,
[31:47] Speaker 2: I know why they backed out. I don't Opus Day.
[31:51] Speaker 3: The churches.
[31:53] Speaker 2: He was certain that Opus Day killed the deal because
[31:56] Speaker 2: it would have made him too powerful in Spain.
[31:58] Speaker 3: It's like a small Catholic set to people oftentimes relate to,
[32:02] Speaker 3: like the nice templar and like the finances of the Vatican. Yeah,
[32:05] Speaker 3: he thinks they're running a coup on him from Spain.
[32:07] Speaker 2: Well, they don't want him to be too powerful in
[32:09] Speaker 2: Spain exactly. I mean that was my first instinct.
[32:12] Speaker 3: I would have it was my third right.
[32:14] Speaker 2: I'm now I'm going to blame Opus Day secretly having
[32:18] Speaker 2: it out for me and not wanting me to succeed,
[32:20] Speaker 2: Like they're threatened by me. They're the source of any
[32:24] Speaker 2: bad reviews I get for this. Oh yeah, it's not
[32:27] Speaker 2: that I annoy people. It said Opus Day doesn't want
[32:30] Speaker 2: me to shine.
[32:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, they are probably an agent of Opus day, trying
[32:33] Speaker 3: to bring you down exactly.
[32:34] Speaker 2: I know it all now. So this whole thing started
[32:37] Speaker 2: a downward spiral for Tino Opus day one Tino zero.
[32:41] Speaker 2: He spent the next couple of years speculating on futures,
[32:44] Speaker 2: but those never panned out. He was forced to get
[32:47] Speaker 2: loans to pay back money that he was never going
[32:50] Speaker 2: to have. Yeah, it wasn't Opus Day, by the way,
[32:53] Speaker 2: it wasn't. No, are you surprised a little bit?
[32:56] Speaker 6: No.
[32:56] Speaker 2: See, there had been a forecast of a really like
[33:00] Speaker 2: super bad olive crop in Spain and thus very little
[33:04] Speaker 2: olive oil, which means they must have been desperate to
[33:07] Speaker 2: order salad oil because like they cook, everything's done with
[33:11] Speaker 2: olive oil. They're like, all right, well we'll take that garbage.
[33:14] Speaker 2: But then the olive oil crop was a boom. They
[33:16] Speaker 2: didn't need to import this crap oil. Olive oil is
[33:19] Speaker 2: so superior, by the way, I love it. So that's
[33:22] Speaker 2: why they backed out of the deal.
[33:24] Speaker 3: So so Spain took the olive oil. That was like No.
[33:28] Speaker 2: Spain was like, look, we're not going to get any
[33:30] Speaker 2: olive oil this year. It looks terrible for us. Let's
[33:34] Speaker 2: get let's put it in order. And then all of
[33:36] Speaker 2: a sudden, they're like no, no, no, we're going to have
[33:37] Speaker 2: like a we got and they're like, okay, cancel the order.
[33:40] Speaker 2: Thank god we didn't pay it in New Jersey.
[33:42] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[33:43] Speaker 2: Just we're so glad we haven't put any money into that.
[33:47] Speaker 2: And I'm so glad Opus Day told us to do it.
[33:49] Speaker 2: So Tino he's now he's got it. He's got to
[33:52] Speaker 2: make some money here. So he tried to cut deals
[33:55] Speaker 2: with India and Indonesia for food for peace.
[33:59] Speaker 3: Get back to the US aid program, right, and that's.
[34:01] Speaker 2: What he was, like, that sweet you know cash money
[34:03] Speaker 2: there those stumbled. Part of the problem was that the
[34:06] Speaker 2: US Agriculture Department switched the emphasis on edible oil donations
[34:11] Speaker 2: to forward relief agencies from vegetable oil to butter oil.
[34:16] Speaker 2: And I'm guessing that this is around the time they
[34:18] Speaker 2: needed to bolster the dairy industry in the States. Ah okay,
[34:21] Speaker 2: so they went from like bolstering soybeans to propping up dairy. Sure,
[34:26] Speaker 2: so Allied sold some vegetable oil to Turkey, but not
[34:30] Speaker 2: as much as the futures traders had expected. Yeah, prices dropped.
[34:34] Speaker 2: Tino lost money.
[34:35] Speaker 3: He couldn't short himself like he couldn't buy like the.
[34:38] Speaker 2: Yeah in nineteen sixty two, Tino, he's still a large
[34:43] Speaker 2: player in commodities market. Oh yeah, And that's why he
[34:46] Speaker 2: thought he could corner the soybean oil market completely big plans.
[34:51] Speaker 2: He wanted to answers, I should always go bigger.
[34:55] Speaker 3: Of course. He wanted to use business I don't think right.
[34:58] Speaker 2: No, he wanted to use all those commodity inventories that
[35:02] Speaker 2: he had loans on from Wall Street banks finance. He
[35:06] Speaker 2: was going to drive up the price of his vegetable
[35:09] Speaker 2: oil holdings and that would raise the value of the inventory,
[35:13] Speaker 2: bring in a profit from all these future contracts. And
[35:16] Speaker 2: he kept talking about, oh you know, in his mind
[35:19] Speaker 2: he was just on the brink of a ton of
[35:21] Speaker 2: major contracts like it was that he could it was
[35:24] Speaker 2: so close he could taste it.
[35:25] Speaker 3: Rather turned here there.
[35:27] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's just just a matter of just one
[35:29] Speaker 2: little thing. And if I can keep up his day
[35:31] Speaker 2: off my tail. But these were massive purchases, massive purchases,
[35:37] Speaker 2: and he needed big bucks behind them. And he got
[35:40] Speaker 2: those big bucks. He got loans from two big name,
[35:43] Speaker 2: old school, well respected Wall Street brokers, Ira Hopped and J. R.
[35:48] Speaker 2: Williston and bean. Okay, those sound fancy.
[35:52] Speaker 3: Of course to someone like me on education, that sounds
[35:55] Speaker 3: like you must be rich.
[35:58] Speaker 2: They also handled his few futures trading with commissions to
[36:01] Speaker 2: the tune of like one hundred thousand dollars a month.
[36:04] Speaker 2: So they're loving it.
[36:05] Speaker 3: That's fluid.
[36:06] Speaker 2: And for collateral they took those warehouse receipts for the
[36:09] Speaker 2: non existent oil. They then turned around and used that
[36:13] Speaker 2: paper to get loans from Chase, Manhattan and Continental Illinois banks,
[36:17] Speaker 2: all loans up and down everything. It's just a big paper,
[36:20] Speaker 2: you know.
[36:21] Speaker 3: Just pushing paper around each other.
[36:23] Speaker 2: House of cards. So, according to the New York Times,
[36:25] Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, Allied Quote held contracts to deliver
[36:29] Speaker 2: at a future date between eighteen thousand and twenty thousand
[36:33] Speaker 2: railroad tank cars of vegetable oil. Each contract is equal
[36:37] Speaker 2: to a single tank car containing sixty thousand pounds of oil.
[36:41] Speaker 2: It's a lot of oils are that is oily. So
[36:44] Speaker 2: by the end of August of nineteen sixty three, Tino
[36:47] Speaker 2: owned seventy nine percent of the cottonseed oil futures contracts
[36:52] Speaker 2: on the Produce Exchange and twenty percent of the soybean
[36:56] Speaker 2: oil contracts on the border trade. This is an insane amount.
[37:00] Speaker 3: This is way more than cornering the market.
[37:01] Speaker 2: Ye are are the market. And then there was strong
[37:04] Speaker 2: pressure on futures prices, so the agg Department was reducing
[37:09] Speaker 2: estimates on exports. Tino had to walk away from buying
[37:12] Speaker 2: futures for a while prices were in for a sharp drop.
[37:15] Speaker 2: He's gonna lose. Yeah, he's gonna lose everything plus some,
[37:18] Speaker 2: including his reputation and his pride. So, like an elder
[37:22] Speaker 2: bank robber, he figured he'd take one last score, one
[37:26] Speaker 2: final hit.
[37:27] Speaker 3: Bro, You've been so lucky for so long.
[37:29] Speaker 2: I figured if he kept on buying futures contracts, demand
[37:32] Speaker 2: for the oil would somehow just materialize.
[37:35] Speaker 3: Oh, so he would basically trigger people to believe the
[37:37] Speaker 3: market was stronger than it will.
[37:38] Speaker 2: Well, if you build it, they will come.
[37:40] Speaker 3: Of course. Why didn't I think like that.
[37:41] Speaker 2: In September of nineteen sixty three, the Soviets sunflower crop failed.
[37:47] Speaker 2: Oh this kicked off whispers that they'd be in the
[37:50] Speaker 2: market for US vegetable oil, and that jumped to the market.
[37:53] Speaker 2: In six weeks, soybean oil climbed from nine dollars twenty
[37:58] Speaker 2: per pound to ten dollars three. There's a huge spike
[38:01] Speaker 2: in six weeks.
[38:02] Speaker 3: It's a huge one.
[38:03] Speaker 2: And in those six weeks, American Express warehousing receipts for
[38:07] Speaker 2: soybean oil pledged for loans to Allied went from seven
[38:11] Speaker 2: hundred and fifty two million pounds to nine hundred and
[38:14] Speaker 2: thirty seven million pounds. That was the amount of all
[38:19] Speaker 2: the stalks of all the soybean oil in the country,
[38:23] Speaker 2: all the oil. Impossible. Yeah, it's he's he's saying he
[38:26] Speaker 2: has more than all the oil that exists.
[38:28] Speaker 3: Who is he? Sam Altman?
[38:30] Speaker 2: So eight hundred million pounds of that that he's claiming
[38:35] Speaker 2: doesn't even exist. So when you do the math on it,
[38:37] Speaker 2: Tino had taken the American Express for sixty million dollars. Yeah, Elizabeth,
[38:42] Speaker 2: that's six hundred and thirty three million dollars today.
[38:44] Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
[38:45] Speaker 2: No, I'm not kidding you. American Express.
[38:48] Speaker 3: I can't imagine American Express is gonna be cool with this, Like,
[38:51] Speaker 3: I'm surprised they haven't had this man murdered.
[38:52] Speaker 2: Right, So would the Soviets be buying salad oil from
[38:56] Speaker 2: their sworn enemy?
[38:58] Speaker 3: Imagine they'd be trading for it. They can't give you rubles,
[39:01] Speaker 3: you know what I mean? They're not going to buy
[39:02] Speaker 3: from the capitalists.
[39:03] Speaker 2: Of course not. Yeah, that was rubbish. That was absolute rubbish.
[39:07] Speaker 2: And the Soviets they had to make a statement denying,
[39:10] Speaker 2: did you say. As a result, as a result, commodity
[39:16] Speaker 2: prices on soybean and cottonseed oil crater. According to Time
[39:21] Speaker 2: magazine quote, the commodities exchanges began pressuring Ira Hopped, by
[39:26] Speaker 2: far the biggest broker for DeAngelis, to put up another
[39:29] Speaker 2: fourteen point one million dollars in margin to cover Tino's
[39:33] Speaker 2: vast contracts. The hop brokers frantically called Tino for the money,
[39:38] Speaker 2: but Tino could not make it, so Hopped went bankrupt.
[39:42] Speaker 2: He bankrupted this huge Wall Street Yeah.
[39:45] Speaker 3: I imagine had been a Wall Street brokerage for a very
[39:47] Speaker 3: long time. Generations possible.
[39:49] Speaker 2: Yes, Allied Creued Vegetable oil refining company. They filed for
[39:53] Speaker 2: bankruptcy on November nineteenth, nineteen sixty three.
[39:56] Speaker 3: This is like trading places. The plot line is trading
[39:58] Speaker 3: trices like all the Floyd Future and killing somebody on
[40:00] Speaker 3: the wall streets.
[40:00] Speaker 2: The futures market crashed. Soybean oil closed at nine eighty
[40:06] Speaker 2: seven on Friday, November fifteenth, nine dollars on Monday, seven
[40:10] Speaker 2: to seventy five on Tuesday, it's just in free fall.
[40:13] Speaker 2: All of Tino's loan values were gone. The New York
[40:17] Speaker 2: Produce Exchange halted all trading on cottonseed oil. Dang dang,
[40:21] Speaker 2: so this like they filed for bankruptcyed November nineteen. Oka
[40:25] Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty three. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated
[40:29] Speaker 2: on Friday, November twenty second.
[40:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just a guess that. Just a couple
[40:33] Speaker 3: days later, Bigger Now shocked.
[40:35] Speaker 2: The markets and they closed early, and they didn't open
[40:38] Speaker 2: until Tuesday, November twenty six. According to Business Insider quote,
[40:43] Speaker 2: the closure of the New York Stock Exchange gave the
[40:45] Speaker 2: exchange some breathing space to address the problems DeAngelis had created.
[40:50] Speaker 2: If the New York Stock Exchange didn't resolve this problem,
[40:53] Speaker 2: not only would the collapse discourage investment by small investors,
[40:57] Speaker 2: but the US Securities and Exchange Commission would interner, reducing
[41:01] Speaker 2: the New York Stock Exchange is power. The NYSE solved
[41:05] Speaker 2: the problem by imposing a twelve million dollar assessment on
[41:09] Speaker 2: exchange members and used the money to make Ira Hopton
[41:13] Speaker 2: company customers whole creditors were not as lucky. American Express
[41:18] Speaker 2: and other lenders lost millions. For the first time, the
[41:21] Speaker 2: New York Stock Exchange had assumed responsibility for a member
[41:25] Speaker 2: firm's failure. When the stock market reopened on Tuesday, it
[41:29] Speaker 2: quickly recovered and moved up for the rest of the year.
[41:33] Speaker 3: Damn, So it's a stockholder all.
[41:37] Speaker 2: The members, Yeah, exactly, taxed all the members in order
[41:39] Speaker 2: to save themselves. So with everything in shambles, the creditors
[41:43] Speaker 2: finally did a real investigation into the New Jersey tanks.
[41:47] Speaker 2: Like with Fresh Inspectors, anyone associated with Allied or American
[41:52] Speaker 2: Express not there, so we know that there weren't one
[41:55] Speaker 2: point eight billion pounds of salad oil up in there.
[41:58] Speaker 3: How much was this.
[42:00] Speaker 2: Nearly one hundred million pounds And as re laid in
[42:03] Speaker 2: the Great Salad Oil Swindle Quote Inspectors opened a big
[42:08] Speaker 2: faucet which was supposed to hold three million, five hundred
[42:12] Speaker 2: and seventy five thousand dollars worth of soybean oil and
[42:15] Speaker 2: salt water poured out for twelve days, The tanks, floating
[42:21] Speaker 2: roof sank and sank and sank, until finally the false
[42:25] Speaker 2: chamber welded into the underside of the roof, which held
[42:28] Speaker 2: a few hundred pounds of soybean oil came to rest
[42:31] Speaker 2: at the bottom of the tank. After finally checking all
[42:34] Speaker 2: the tanks which they could find, the inspectors had found
[42:38] Speaker 2: only one hundred and thirty four million pounds of stuff,
[42:41] Speaker 2: excluding salt water that looked like salad oil or animal fat.
[42:46] Speaker 2: The inspectors still could not firmly identify the contents, but
[42:50] Speaker 2: they estimated about half the contents was quote soap stock,
[42:54] Speaker 2: a residue of the salad oil refining process worth only
[42:57] Speaker 2: about two cents a pound. Checking the records of the
[43:01] Speaker 2: tanks allied least from the owner of the tank farm.
[43:04] Speaker 2: The inspectors also discovered that American express Warehousing listed tanks
[43:08] Speaker 2: on their books that in fact belonged to Petroleum Storage Company.
[43:13] Speaker 2: For example, the four tanks were where bunges one hundred
[43:17] Speaker 2: and sixty million pounds of soybean oil were supposed to
[43:20] Speaker 2: be stored had always been filled with gasoline.
[43:23] Speaker 3: So when you're talking soap stock, you mean like basically
[43:26] Speaker 3: like the cheapest like lard, like so like fats that
[43:30] Speaker 3: could be used for like the yeah, you throw some
[43:32] Speaker 3: lyon there and you can make soap, but this is
[43:34] Speaker 3: like not supposed to be eaten.
[43:36] Speaker 2: Or used industrial soap. Yeah, it's not primotagulio. Wow, sixteen
[43:42] Speaker 2: companies and two brokerage houses were forced into bankruptcy. How
[43:47] Speaker 2: many sixteen companies two brokerage houses, Zaron? Where was the money?
[43:52] Speaker 3: I'm guessing the overseas Somewhere in Swiss bank accounty.
[43:56] Speaker 2: About forty million went to soybean futures who cashed in
[44:01] Speaker 2: when prices dropped. Another sixty million went to pay for
[44:05] Speaker 2: the rapid expansion of the refining operation, covering operating losses
[44:09] Speaker 2: and like paying interest charges on loans. And then there
[44:13] Speaker 2: are the incalculable millions that went to friends, family, business associates.
[44:19] Speaker 2: Tino was drawing a salary of about one hundred thousand
[44:22] Speaker 2: a year, which is like a million in today's dollars
[44:25] Speaker 2: in But you know, he was known to spread his
[44:27] Speaker 2: money around so that all these millions, who knows probably
[44:33] Speaker 2: bank account.
[44:33] Speaker 3: He really wasn't diverting a lot to like some weird
[44:36] Speaker 3: foundation he had or anything like that. He just gave
[44:38] Speaker 3: it to everyone he knew. And that because everyone knowed him,
[44:41] Speaker 3: favors and so forth right right.
[44:43] Speaker 2: So in January of nineteen sixty four, the Justice Department
[44:46] Speaker 2: got an eighteen count indictment against him. They charged Dino
[44:50] Speaker 2: with transporting across state lines forty million dollars worth of
[44:54] Speaker 2: forged warehouse receipts for vegetable oil. He pleaded not guilty
[44:59] Speaker 2: to all counts, and he was looking at a ten
[45:00] Speaker 2: thousand dollars fine and ten years in jail on each
[45:04] Speaker 2: count eighteen counts. In nineteen sixty five, he turned around
[45:08] Speaker 2: and did plead guilty.
[45:09] Speaker 3: He's like fifty at this point because he's born like nineteen.
[45:12] Speaker 2: Fifteen, ninety fifteen, so he has fifty years old. He
[45:15] Speaker 2: winds up, Okay, you know what, I'm gonna plead guilty
[45:17] Speaker 2: to four federal counts of fraud and conspiracy. He got
[45:20] Speaker 2: ten years in prison, but not really because there's this
[45:24] Speaker 2: new section at the time of the Federal Criminal Code,
[45:28] Speaker 2: and it turned Tino over to the personal custody of
[45:32] Speaker 2: US Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Really, and Tino would be
[45:37] Speaker 2: subject to FBI questioning about the details of everything he did,
[45:42] Speaker 2: and then the US Director of Prisons would report to
[45:44] Speaker 2: the judge and either affirm the sentence suggest a reduction
[45:50] Speaker 2: or recommend that Tino be put on probation immediately, so
[45:53] Speaker 2: by cooperating he could be free, like inside of three months.
[45:57] Speaker 3: So they basically wanted him to flip on anyone who
[45:59] Speaker 3: worked with They're kind of hoping there was some rico mobs.
[46:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when you think about who his associates were,
[46:04] Speaker 2: that's what I'm guessing. I'm guessing it had something to
[46:06] Speaker 2: do with this thing of ours they wanted him to rat.
[46:09] Speaker 2: According to Time magazine quote, although he pleaded guilty, powerful
[46:13] Speaker 2: forces were working against me and on the Department of
[46:16] Speaker 2: Agriculture quote they called me a down there. So I
[46:21] Speaker 2: guess his FBI questioning didn't go so well.
[46:24] Speaker 3: Doesn't sound like it.
[46:25] Speaker 2: He got sentenced to twenty years. He served seven of
[46:29] Speaker 2: those and got out in nineteen seventy.
[46:31] Speaker 3: Two seven on twenty uh huh.
[46:32] Speaker 2: According to MSN quote. In nineteen eighty, Tino was back
[46:36] Speaker 2: in prison for a seven year sentence after being found
[46:39] Speaker 2: guilty of masterminding a scheme that cheated farmers and their
[46:43] Speaker 2: suppliers out of thirteen million dollars. In nineteen ninety three,
[46:47] Speaker 2: he scored another seven year prison sentence for using forged
[46:51] Speaker 2: bank letters to buy a million dollars in pork from
[46:53] Speaker 2: a Canadian company.
[46:55] Speaker 3: Back in pork and all the way back to the beginning, all.
[46:57] Speaker 2: The way and Tino, you know, ninety three.
[47:00] Speaker 3: So he's like, oh, yeah, once you find you're good
[47:04] Speaker 3: at something, you gotta stick with it.
[47:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. He really all he.
[47:07] Speaker 3: Knows how to do is to cheat on major purchases.
[47:10] Speaker 2: He passed away at the age of ninety three in
[47:13] Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. Wow, rip salad oil, swindler king, Dude.
[47:19] Speaker 3: You expect all this from like, Hey, I want olive oil.
[47:22] Speaker 3: I'd love that it's in like cottonseed oil.
[47:25] Speaker 2: So what's your ridiculous takeaway?
[47:28] Speaker 3: I mean, like you always kind of guess when it
[47:31] Speaker 3: comes to these big contracts, like, oh, it's kind of shady,
[47:34] Speaker 3: it's hanky. There's people who are doing corruption, but like
[47:38] Speaker 3: this scale that he went for where he's controlling the
[47:41] Speaker 3: whole market, the arrogance, and he didn't think that he
[47:43] Speaker 3: would be found out. But there are so many people reliant.
[47:47] Speaker 3: Like when I made the joke earlier about Sam Altman,
[47:50] Speaker 3: it's because when you start hyping a market and everyone's
[47:53] Speaker 3: listening to you as the major player in the market.
[47:56] Speaker 3: There's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna
[47:58] Speaker 3: like question you. A lot of journalists are gonna be
[48:00] Speaker 3: looking for stuff, a lot of regulators. It's just you've
[48:02] Speaker 3: increase the amount he should have Like not that he
[48:04] Speaker 3: should have gone smaller, but you think it he would
[48:07] Speaker 3: be a little more savvy. And they kind of like,
[48:10] Speaker 3: I don't know, like have some of it be real?
[48:12] Speaker 3: You know, like yeah, like there's got to be it
[48:14] Speaker 3: can't be that. It's it's all just whatever sea water
[48:17] Speaker 3: and a little bit of oil on the top.
[48:18] Speaker 2: You're right, there's too much of a chasm between what
[48:21] Speaker 2: was possible and what he was promising.
[48:23] Speaker 3: There's like nothing you couldn't I understand. Like he made
[48:27] Speaker 3: the mistake with the futures and Opus day and all that,
[48:30] Speaker 3: but he was doing that for decades. Is like, bro,
[48:32] Speaker 3: come on, like quit while you're ahead at some point,
[48:35] Speaker 3: exactly what yours a particular takeaway?
[48:37] Speaker 2: While you're ahead at some point.
[48:38] Speaker 3: You take mine? What's yours?
[48:39] Speaker 2: That's my took it? Wow, it's my takeaway now.
[48:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, my grandma gave me that takeaway.
[48:47] Speaker 2: I would like a talk back, I think, Oh.
[48:53] Speaker 3: My god, I.
[48:58] Speaker 6: Love Hi. Mandy from Canada. Here. Whenever Elizabeth mentions Regina
[49:07] Speaker 6: corn Tower, I'm reminded of driving across Canada with my
[49:10] Speaker 6: husband and stepson, and twenty odd years ago, we've made
[49:14] Speaker 6: it to Saskatchewan, stopped for gas and after paying, I
[49:17] Speaker 6: told my husband the clerk said it would be about
[49:19] Speaker 6: another two hours to get to Regina. At this moment,
[49:23] Speaker 6: my five year old stepson, said Mandy in a shocked voice.
[49:27] Speaker 6: I calmly told him, I said, Regina, not Vagina.
[49:32] Speaker 2: Ha.
[49:34] Speaker 4: I like that.
[49:35] Speaker 3: The boy knew all the proper terminology, you know, teach
[49:38] Speaker 3: a kid physiology.
[49:39] Speaker 2: That's right, the proper is amazing. Oh my goodness, that's
[49:45] Speaker 2: all Regina Regina Vagina. Uh. That's it for today. You
[49:50] Speaker 2: can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. Now
[49:53] Speaker 2: we've been winning a lot of.
[49:54] Speaker 3: Awards lately, nobody's getting nominated.
[49:57] Speaker 2: But things have taken a turn for the worst. Oh no,
[50:00] Speaker 2: we were recently given detention in mister de Wolfe's science class,
[50:07] Speaker 2: and so it's iss in school suspension. OK, but art
[50:12] Speaker 2: we got we gotta, you know, turn this ship around, Saren,
[50:15] Speaker 2: you know, straight up and fly right.
[50:17] Speaker 3: Was it for us or for the website and for
[50:18] Speaker 3: the just for the website.
[50:20] Speaker 2: Goodness just for the website. We're also at Ridiculous Crime
[50:23] Speaker 2: on both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube a
[50:27] Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crimes pod. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail
[50:31] Speaker 2: dot com. Leave us a talk back on the iHeart
[50:34] Speaker 2: app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
[50:44] Speaker 2: and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the Avocado Oil
[50:47] Speaker 2: King of Atlanta Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutgers. Judith Research
[50:52] Speaker 2: is by One Thousand Island Kingpin Marissa Brown. The theme
[50:56] Speaker 2: song is by Ranch Magnet Thomas Lee and Green Goddess
[50:59] Speaker 2: Traffic Travis Dunn. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred.
[51:04] Speaker 2: Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive
[51:08] Speaker 2: producers are Ben Mayonnai's is a Legitimate Salad Dressing Bowlin
[51:13] Speaker 2: and Noel Heck Mayo is just Legit Full stop.
[51:17] Speaker 4: Rounds Crime, Say It one More Times Crime.
[51:29] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts.
[51:32] Speaker 1: My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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