Beware the man who eats soybeans and shi** gold. In the pantheon of agriculture’s notorious con artists, one hustler reigns supreme—Anthony “Tino” De Angelis, the Salad Oil King.
With soybeans as his wheelhorse, De Angelis stole over $1 billion at today’s currency rates, shook Wall Street to its core, dragged American Express to the brink, humiliated big banking, embarrased USDA, ushered in the rise of Warren Buffet, and flaunted a dizzying chain of Ponzi pyramids.
For almost two decades, De Angelis’ hand touched more U.S. soybeans than anyone on the planet, as he pulled the levers on an incredible succession of agriculture crimes involving ghost tanks, rancid product, fake receipts, market manipulation, and a reptilian ability to shed blame.
“I was the Salad Oil King,” crowed De Angelis.
Truer words never spoken. Welcome to the king’s twisted tale.
Commodity Heaven and Hell
In February 1915, one of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history, Frank James, the last of the James Gang and elder brother of Jessie James, passed away at his farm in Kearney, Missouri. On cue, nine months later in November 1915, Anthony “Tino” De Angelis was born 1,200 miles east in Harlem, New York City. Out with the old, in with the new.
At 16 years young, De Angelis dropped out of school in 1931 and borrowed $500 from his rail worker father to invest in a candy store, a risky play during the heart of the Great Depression. Adios to the cash when the candy store crashed, but the loss highlighted the moxie of a NYC teenager intent on making the big time.
De Angelis bounced to a bottom-dweller job at a meat and fish market, but gained the manager’s hat within three short years, testament to his genuine business promise and high intellect. The fish market stint was followed by a foreman’s role at a hog processing facility in the Bronx. In 1938, with experience and a nest egg beneath his mattress, De Angelis invested in M&D Cutters, a New York butchery, and hauled in $300,000 three years later.
Hidden behind bland physical features—a diminutive 5’5” in height and plump as a boardinghouse cat, hair combed directly back, horn-rimmed glasses perched on a pudgy face, pearl-gray neckties, no jewelry or outward flash—ambition’s fire roared in De Angelis. At the close of World War ll, he started a packing company to fill insatiable foreign market holes, and inked a 1947 deal with the Yugoslavian government for $1 million in lard. When the Yugoslavians sued De Angelis for delivery of spoiled product, he quickly settled with a $100,000 apology. Business acumen he possessed; business scruples he lacked.
Gaining in stature, De Angelis bought majority interest and assumed the presidency at a North Bergen, New Jersey meatpacker outfit, Adolf Gobel Co., and secured a USDA school lunch program contract to the tune of 19 million lb. of smoked meat. De Angelis delivered a measly 2 million lb.—uninspected and inedible. When USDA called him out, De Angelis skirted responsibility, blamed a mix-up, and agreed to give Uncle Sam $100,000 for the trouble. Within months, blacklisted from future federal contract bids, De Angelis was fired and Gobel went into bankruptcy.
De Angelis moved toward bigger and better. The future, as he correctly assessed, was in soy. No longer poverty peas, soybeans were commerce, and the supply of soybean oil, generally sourced from the Midwest, was outpacing domestic demand. De Angelis envisioned U.S. food-grade oil flowing to foreign countries, with his fat fingers on the tap.
Source: agweb.com
Photo Credit: GettyImages-BenGoode
Categories: Missouri, Crops, Soybeans