What do The Salad Oil King and The Godfather have in common?

Tino De Angelis (l) , AKA The Salad Oil King, and Vito Corleone (r), AKA The Godfather,
knew how to pull the strings behind the scenes

THE ANSWER? Both were unscrupulous yet loyal. Violent yet romantic. Greedy yet benevolent.

But there were distinct differences between the two men…

Vito Corleone was the figment of a writer’s imagination. A flawed human being who was both revered and feared. A man who the world has spent billions to see again and again during the past 40+ years.

The inspiration for The Salad Oil King, Tino De Angelis, was real. A remarkable, pudgy high school dropout from Little Italy, who skimmed billions from government programs to fund his “Mona Lisa”—a $13 billion pre-internet scam that brought down two blueblood brokerages and halted trading on the stock market for a day.

He also was a romantic, asking the girl of his dreams to elope during their first dinner. And, like The Godfather, he had his own unique way of justifying his actions to family, friends, foes, and the Federal Judicial System.

P.S. Did I mention the protagonist name, Alfonso “Fonso” Gravenese, was inspired by one of my cousins who could have given Tino a run for his money?