The High School Dropout Who Scammed $14B From U.S. Taxpayers Visits The University of California, San Marcos, School of Extended Learning.

 

 

“Fonso” Gravenese, a high school dropout from New York’s Little Italy, created a series of creative white-collar scams that ultimately manipulate the worldwide price of vegetable oil futures and shuts down the New York Stock Exchange.

Before Fonso’s magnum opus, he and his buddies spent 30 years amassing a multi-billion-dollar chest by shortchanging children’s lunches, turning Federal ration stamps into a cash flow machine, and skimming tens of millions in foreign aid earmarked for needy countries.

 

An unassuming house in Bayonne, New Jersey, where Tino and his wife occupied in a second-floor apartment.

 

At the end of his three-decade journey, one could say, Fonso was more ruthless than The Godfather, more unscrupulous than Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, and more generous than philanthropist Bruce Wayne (Batman). The difference? Fonso and his story were very real.

On March 2nd, those enrolled in the University of California at San Marcos School of Extended Learning will see and hear more about one of the greatest, pre-internet white-collar criminals in history. Ironically, Fonso has been lost in time since receiving a seven-year prison sentence—with two years off for teaching Bible class—and disappearing with millions into the ozone. Admission is $15.