And just as astonishing, in a way, was the frankness with which Gallagher's own law partner Harvey Dembe revealed to LIFE his misgivings about the Gallagher-De Angelis relationship. It jeopardized, Dembe said, both Gallagher's political future and the stability of the Bayonne bank of which Dembe is an owner and board chairman and Gallagher is a director.

In 1963, authorities had begun to plow into the blizzard of phony credit documents with which "Tino" De Angelis gypped Wall Street financiers out of $150 million. The instruments of these frauds were fake warehouse receipts attesting that millions of pounds of crude soybean oil lay shimmering in Bayonne storage tanks. When the unsuspecting creditors got around to inspecting their collateral, most of Tino's tanks were found to be empty. While Tino was piling up his paper fortune, Congressman Gallagher was representing him as an attorney. In a 15-month period that ended in May 1963, Gallagher harvested $50,000 in fees from De Angelic enterprises-$40,000 from Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Refining Corp., $10,000 from FI Dorado Packing Company.

The checks - seven in all - were drawn to the firm of Dernbe. Dembe & Gallagher, but De Angelis - as Partner Harvey Demhe would testify under oath - was Neil Gallagher's client.

By November of 1963, De Angelis' company was bankrupt. Subsequently he pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy. But as prosecutors and bankruptcy referees took over guidance of the erstwhile salad oil king's shattered atfairs, other companies, quickly put together by some of his old henchmen, began moving back into the commodities fields he'd lest vacant. One of these corporate card houses, a firm known as Pal Provision Corp. of Jersey City, entered the tallow and lard business f'arly in 1964 on the strength of a line of credit opened at the Broadway National Bank in Bayonne. By late that year, the loans totaled more than $300,000. The majority stock in Broadway National Bank is controlled by Gallagher's law partners, Harvey Dembe and his brother, Edward. According to Harvey Dembe, the brothers had grave misgivings about extending credit to Pal Provision, whose titular heads were two young exassociates of De Angelis named Pat Albergo and Edmund Sirgusa. The Dembes' fears were calmed only by the appearance of a third signature as guarantor of the loan. The signer: Cornelius F. Gallagher.

Dembe told LIFE reporters that the bank would never have granted the loan to the De Angelistainted enterprise without Director Gallagher's endorsement: "We didn't know the people. It was a new venture. It was undercapitalized."

Gallagher's role in the Pal Provision financing tirst came to public attention when Harvey Dembe testi;ied under questioning by attorneys for the De Angelis receivership in Newark that the congressman had introduced Sirgusa and Albergo to the bank.

Asked by newspaper reporters shortly after, the congressman breezily recalled that he had run into Albergo and Sirgusa at some affair or other and "as a matter of routine, I set up an appointment for them at the bank. A lot of people come to me looking for loans at the bank because they know I am a member of the board."

Harvey Dembe recalls that Gallagher's intercession was consid erably less casual. Said Dembe:
"He [Gallagher] said he wanted to get involved in it . . . he said there's a vacuum in the business since De Angelis went bankrupt. There are people in ]De Angelis'] organization that never had anything to do with manipulations. . . . They need credit on shipping documents-and credit on shipping documents was a way of lending money. Anyway, Neil wanted to see this thing [Pal Provision] get started"

Harvey Dembe says that he warned Gallagher of the political liabilities of any involvement with De Angelis' people. But he insisted on guaranteeing the loan. Beyond Gallagher's signature, the Pal Provision loan was secured by "mate's and clock receipts"papers showing [hat a cargo of Pal products had been loaded aboard a given vessel. The cargo in the hold was sound collateral, assuming the receipts were legitimate. There was the catch.

During the De Angelis investigations in 1964, the FBI and the United States Attorney's office in Newark began to sense De Angelis' tie-up with Pal Provision and suspect that some of Pal's cargoes might be as ephemeral as the soybean oil in Tino's storage tanks. The investigators discovered that on days when certain Pal shipments were supposedly loaded aboard designated ships, the ships weren't even at the dock.

At about this same time, LIFE has learned, Congressman Gallagher's guarantee of the Pal Provision loan came to the attention of the fraud section of the Department of Justice. The Department accordingly asked federal authorities in Newark to investigate the loan itself.

The Congressman and the Salad Oil Swindler First Page

US Concepts - Urban Concepts 750 Urban Specialists, Proprietary Intelligence, Influencer Network Entertainment/Music Events, Buzz/Viral Programs, Street Teams

The Advance-Decline Line As A Tool In Technical Market Analysis

Is there voting after death? Hudson County Politics

City Hall Web Wall City Hall puts one Web site off limits Web site's owner: Why ban just me?

For All Sorts of Unique New York City Information, Visit GET NY!

Brooklyn Politics: Due to the tireless efforts of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles "Joe" Hynes,
the people of New York City remain safe from that gang of marauding political reprobates – Sandra Roper, John O'Hara, and Judge John Phillips.

The Trail of the Tiger – Tammany: 1789-1928 Boss Tweed and The History of New York City Political Corruption

United States Of America V. Robert Philip Hanssen The FBI Agent Who Spied for the Russians

Now on Sale at Amazon

Hudson County, New Jersey is a place of many firsts - including genocide and slavery.
Political corruption is a tradition here.
First issue in a series by Anthony Olszewski – Click HERE to find out more.

Print Edition Now on Sale at Amazon Read Online at Google Book Search Advertiser and Distributor Inquiries Welcome