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Useless Information Podcast
Anthony "Tino" De Angelis (November 3, 1915 – September 26, 2009) was a Bayonne, New Jersey, commodities trader who dealt in vegetable oil futures worldwide.
In 1962 De Angelis' company, Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Refining Corporation, bilked 51 banks out of over $180 million ($1.59 billion today) in what became known as the Salad Oil scandal after he failed to corner the soybean oil market. (Soybean oil is used in salad dressing.)
De Angelis was born to Italian immigrant parents in the Bronx. While still a teenager he managed about 200 employees in a meat and fish market. When he found out that the new National School Lunch Act program would buy practically any food items (given certain price requirements) he took over the Adolph Gobel Company in North Bergen, New Jersey and was awarded a large contract, whence he promptly overcharged the government by $31,000. He also delivered over 2 million pounds of uninspected meat. Gobel would eventually go bankrupt.