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HIGH-SCHOOL-DROPOUT MASTERMINDS A SOPHISTICATED $14 BILLION WHITE-COLLAR SCAM (WITH THE HELP OF HIS MAFIA FRIENDS.)Bespectacled Fonso Gravenese was just six when he ran his first scam in 1915--winning quarters from neighborhood buddies by rubbing olive on his yo-yo string to make it spin faster. From there, the scams got bigger, and his appetite more insatiable. By the time Fonso was 50, he had built a $500 million personal fortune by shortchanging government-funded free school lunch programs, diverting World War II family rationing stamps to his Mafia partners, and accepting third world country bribes to gain unfair access to America's International Food for Peace Program. In the early 1960's, Fonso's grandest scam-to dictate worldwide salad oil pricing by controlling the availability of two key ingredients--cottonseed and soybean-backfired. Venerable brokerage houses shut their doors and the NYSE was forced to halt trading for two days. In the process, Fonso and $14 billion in salad oil inventory vanished into thin air. The story, based on real events, is filled with dark humor, unexpected pathos, and grandiose philanthropy, and offers new meaning to the phrase ""buyer beware."" (Contains 70 original illustrations).

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