Salad Oil King; Stories of greed gone mad. Rip-off # 13.
How to always win at yo-yo contests.

Alfonso “Fonso” Gravenese AKA The Salad Oil King, loved to gamble…on sure things. Growing up Yo-Yo contests were held daily in Little Italy. The entry fee was 5 cents per play.

Fonso knew his opponents were bigger and older, but he had a streak of larceny in his ice water veins. Minutes before the competition he would apply olive oil to the yo-yo strings to make his yo-yo go faster, higher. Fonse “earned” so many nickels he eventually bought a shiny new Schwinn bike.

He was also smart enough to lose once in a while so that nobody could claim foul.

The Salad Oil King is the remarkable story—based on a true story—of how a streetwise, unscrupulous high school dropout eventually bilked the American government out of $13 billion before anyone even noticed. It is a classic American crime story of greed gone mad.