High school dropout swindles Wall Street Blue Bloods for $13 billion.

Anthony “Tino” DeAngelis, AKA The Salad Oil King, pleads case. Gets 7 years in jail, with two off for teaching Bible classes.

One of America’s greatest pre-internet scam artists has disappeared off the American crime scene until now!

Life started simple enough for pudgy little Tino. He rubbed olive oil on his yo-yo-strings to win nickels from the older kids in Little Italy. Later, he helped his father, a neighborhood fish vendor, stuff ice into whole fish to increase their weight.

After “graduation,” he accumulated hundreds of millions, compliments of loopholes in a series of well-meaning Federal Government programs with the assistance of a cast of unsavory characters.

Then it was on to Wall Street and his magnificent “Mona Lisa” scam.

When caught, Tino’s defense was, “Okay judge, you got me.” Incredulously, he received a seven-year minimum security jail sentence and got two years off for good behavior.

Later, Tino and the funds from the disappearing inventory vanished into thin air. Somebody told somebody, who told somebody, Tino and his money found their way to Switzerland.

AHHH, ONLY IN AMERICA.

And, only in The Salad Oil King, a book of historical fiction based on Tino’s meandering. In the book, the San Francisco Literary Review calls “An American Crime Classic by a Master Story-Teller,” Tino is Alfonso “Fonso” Gravenese.

P.S. My mother was Tino’s babysitter, later my father was his business partner. The inspiration to rename Tino Fonso Gravenese came from my cousin of the same name!