“Release the Onions!”: the Vincent Kosuga story

In 1955, one man attempted to control the price of onions in America – to do that he created an illegal onion cartel and then together they cornered the market and drove the prices. It was like Trading Places for onion futures.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Yo,
Elizabeth Dutton, what's up? I got a question for you girls.
Do you know what's ridiculous? I do? Actually, you spread
it up, spread some work. Let me give you a
little background though. Okay, so you know that I'm going
to talk about some things that I like and that's
not ridiculous. No, not at all. I like candles, but

(00:22):
I'm snobby about candles. I only like expensive candles because
they smell good. Like right now, I'm a little bit
obsessed with these candles from this company. Oddis V I V? No,
it's like V I V. Anyway, They're amazing. I'm not

(00:42):
even getting paid for this. They should pay me, but seriously,
like they're the most incredible candles. I'll write it down.
I love them. So I like that. You know what
else I like? Um, polka music, onion, soup, onion soup.
Oh no, these things go together, and I like I
like chips. Odd. Yeah, you back ended on this one totally.

(01:03):
You slipped it in. Like. So are you familiar? Okay,
first of all, are you familiar with the Super Bowl? Uh?
With the football? We just had one? Yes, Yeah, it
was a huge bowl. Super Bowl for the whole globe.
Everybody was yeah, okay, so people have super Bowl parties.
I've talked about this. Yes, I went to length and

(01:24):
you went to one. Did you have dips and chip?
I had chips? No dip, chip and dips? Wait what? Okay,
so have you ever heard of is it hell of
a good dip? Let's just say it is and keep moving.
It's a brand in the store. I don't see l
u V a hell of a you know, they got ranch,

(01:45):
they got uh onion, they got them all ranch on
they so they had this special thing for this is
taking way too long. They had this special thing for
the super Bowl. They were giving away super Bowl snack
scented campbells. Why so they eate a French onion candle.
And they also had like a recipe for French onion
soup bites, which okay, aside from that, buttermilk ranch and

(02:09):
then just potato chips in here, baby, lighten it up. Onion,
French onion candle. Just go cook some onions. I know
what you're getting for your birthday. I know I wreak
of onions all the time. So that that that that
that that is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. Now it's coincidental, though,

(02:33):
because I've got something for you that should be right
up your alley. Okay, yeah, my shooter alley. Yeah, you
know exactly alley. Yeah. The thing I was thinking, that's
ridiculous capitalism gonna get me right in the shooter alley. Capitalism, Yeah,
that's ridiculous. I just slide past that. Capitalism is ridiculous, Elizabeth,

(02:55):
But not like in the good fun way. You know,
it's ridiculous, like in that Picasso of face way. And
by that I mean it's it's recognizable, you know, but
it's still distarted and exploited, and it's probably overvalued by
market speculators. Right. So anyway, I'm not gonna get on
a soapbox about capitalism. You know my feelings about it.
All economic models are ridiculous. Young felt that way. Well,

(03:18):
leaving aside my college freshman opinions about capitalism, I would
like to tell you about a crime of capitalism, one
that is ridiculous and one that involves onions. Yeah, yeah,
it's about onions. You like onions, You like onions. You
like onions. What's your third favorite onion? Okay, good choice. Well,
I like onions too. So now imagine if onions were

(03:41):
suddenly like ninety dollars a bag for onions. That'd be ridiculous, right,
that would be very right. That's essentially what happened in
when one man conspired to create an onion cartel so
that he could have control over all of the onions
in America. Yes, this is ridiculous Crime A podcast about

(04:20):
absurd and outrageous capers, ices and cons It's always murder
free and ridiculous, Elizabeth Zaren. Before we get into the
onion cartel and the man with the bond villain dreams
to control all the onions in America, I'd like to
talk to you about a subject that's very near and
dear to my heart. No, I want to talk to

(04:40):
you about pork belly futures. Okay, yeah, Now let me
back up. Do you know what a pork belly future is?
Kind of I mean, I'm not gonna lie and be like, oh, yeah, totally.
And then you ask me something about like let's keep
it simpler, it's like all you know what it is,
it's all by cell cell by because I yell it
into a phone. Yeah. And then I had another guy
who's like yelling by by sell that yeah, with like
a bunch of little slips of paper and perfect Yes,

(05:01):
I know. Okay, Well, do you know what a pork
belly is? Okay? Now what is a pork belly? It's
the belly of pork. Fig Yes, it's a butcher's cut
of park. It's like a big layer of fat on it. Yes.
Is where we get bacon? Yeah, so I figured you're
familiar with like how we get bacon. You you've lived
in the South exactly. Now, hogs are a huge market.

(05:23):
Everyone around the world loves pork. We talked about chicken,
but everybody loves park. Did you know how much pork
we produce in a year as just as a globe?
And I'm going to tell you in millions of metric
tons of so China's number one, and they produced five
point four seven million metric tons of hog every year.
The European unit two point three million metric tons of hog.

(05:48):
Now US re number three, number three, number three, so
we re number three one point to one million metric tons.
And rounding out the top four is Brazil with three
point seven million tons. I'm sorry, we are yeah point three.
Something is this when they're weighing him. Is that rude
or to tutor? Is that like the bones and everything
that weight? Yeah, that's like sale price. Wait, they use

(06:09):
all of it. Let's be frank. Yeah, everything but the
frank joke. That's good. No, the demand for pig has
been so high and so just outsized for so long,
and we were talking to centuries that eventually when we
get into like capitalism era, the pork belly market was

(06:30):
always super volatile. It just was like the prices are fluctuating,
made rise and falls. Hog farmers would make a fortune
and then they lose everything. So something had to be
done there, like how do we stabilize this pork belly market.
Starting in nineteen sixty one, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, that's
the Dow Jones for raw materials like pork bellies and

(06:50):
frozen orange juice and wheat futures, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,
it began trading pork belly futures and that was meant
to stabilize pork prices, right, But it did bring some
calm to the pork market and also led to one
of my favorite films, Trading Places. You like trading Places.
Did you and your brother trap you guys grow watch
that growing up? I think, Yeah, what's your third favorite scene? Oh? Goodness,

(07:13):
I don't know. You know that, like I don't really
remember anything more than an hour. I know, like like
an eight year all to keep asking you your third favorite?
Do like that this was your third favorite hero? No?
The problem that I have is that I'll know that
I watched something, and then if I watch it, it
like refreshes my memory. Yes, I honestly I couldn't tell you.
I mean, I know it's like Dana Roydon and Edine Murphy.

(07:34):
Jimmie Lee Curtis. I don't even remember her. Do you
remember the gorilla like where they remember the blackface scene
or blackface? Yes, okay, I don't remember some part of it.
For those who have never seen the film, Trading Places,
about these dudes, the Duke brothers, Randolph and Mortimer Duke.
Their super old money. They have like seats on the
down jone exchange, and the Duke brothers they have a
commodities brokerage firm, which is what we're talking about now,

(07:56):
may bide cell raw materials that become the products we
all by. Now, the two brothers getting a spirit of
debate about nature versus nurture. So they decide they will
test their theory with a bet, and so they pick
rich person Dana Right a poor person Eddie Murphy and
they have them switch places and then see what will happen. Right,
So they do this. They decided to ruin these two
bands live and they make Eddie Murphy rich. They make
dannack Royd poor and he's just like he hits the

(08:19):
skids hard. And they just they determined that wealth is
not about merit. It really is about rather who you know,
wealth is about access as it he doesn't. It's nurture
not nature. Right anyway, Dana Chary, Eddie Murphy, they decided
to get revenge on the Duke brothers for ruining their lives.
So what do they do. They use frozen orange juice futures.
Okay yeah, yeah, remember okay, So they're active subterfuge. They

(08:42):
have this agent, guy Meeks, who has he has the
crop YOUELD reports. So they get the crop UELD report,
they switch it out, they give it to the Duke brothers.
The Duke brothers going, they tell their agents on the
stock market, Bye bye bye Cell Cell Cell right. So
they go in there and they have their marching orders
and they're going to try to drive up orange juice
to a fixed price. Right, So the Duke Brothers attempt
to corner them our market. Now, being super wealthy, they
can do this, and they do it all on margin. Though,

(09:04):
this is where they make a mistake. You know what
margin is. It's where you use someone else's money to
buy a stock and then when the price, when the
when the time to actually purchase it comes, do you
have to pay for whatever the price is set at
that time, so you can say a little bit of
a fluctuation. You do not know necessarily what the price
will be. So they buy this on margin. They got
all these orange juice futures, contracts, markets open, Duke Brothers

(09:24):
buying a ton and then trading pauses crop, your report
comes out. Everybody's like, oh no, the Duke brothers, what
they were told is the opposite. So now everybody's trying
to drop their orange juice prices. The market response orange
usee prices drop at great and Murphy. They have bought
futures on the short so now they can because they
have promised to buy orange juice, they have to start

(09:44):
buying to fulfill their orders. And they do this, and
that that they do is they buy everybody who wants
to sell oranges except from the Duke brothers. So now
they have these prices they are contractually obligated to buy.
It bankrupts them. This is the power of the futures
market because you're basically saying tomorrow, I will buy this
these orange juices from this orange juice from you, but

(10:04):
whatever the prices tomorrow today, and you lock it in,
and that's supposed to stabilize the market. Some people make
these bets. Well that's what the Duke brothers ended up.
How they end up going belly up, much like say
a pork belly. Now, to bring it all back around
to park belly, futures farming has gone industrial, right, we
all know this. It's agri business is big business. But

(10:24):
that means they can lower the prices of the cost
to bring a hog to market. That's been really helpful
to also stabilize the pork product market. Right. This also
means hog farmers can leverage their size to control prices,
and this is pretty much how you get price stability. Right.
This killed off the pork belly futures market. So two
thousand eleven, Chicago mercantile exchanss like, forget this, We're not

(10:46):
doing it anymore. The agri business basically made it no
longer necessary. Right. This also happened to be coincidentally one
year after Congress looked into the fixing of pork billy futures.
So you know, it was that a little bit of
congressional testimony. And by the way, trading places was cited
in congressional testimony to help the sound help the cores
men and women understand futures. It's not just us good

(11:12):
teaching tools. It is I'm telling you, Eddie Murphy, if
you want to get people's attention and hold it, Eddie
Murphy exactly, throwing some dan A right if you really
just like, you know, it got some Canadians anyway. It
turns out this whole thing I'm telling you this all
applies to the onion futures market. Have you ever heard
of onion futures? No, I've not. Well, turns out you
can get onion futures. You can buy onions before they
come to market, which are also now no longer traded

(11:34):
on the Chicago mercantilers. They get rid of those two
Oh yeah, and uh there this case. So there isn't
a classic eighties movie to explain it, so we'll have
to rely on me, you know, just good. Yeah, but
it's the great Onion Scam of nineteen fifty five and
just imagine trading places like stuff happening. Right You ready
for the story of Vincent Cassuga and the Onion Cartel.

(11:54):
Never been more ready. Okay, this story takes place in
one of my favorite places, Chicago. Chicago's amazing, dude, it
really is, like I legit love Chicago. I love it.
There's so much green space for a big city. Oh yeah,
it's a lot of the Midwestern cities because they're built
in the nineteenth century before cars. They have a much
better layout, plan, gener structure. Everything is just a lot cool.
I've been finding that it was Indianapolis recently. I was like,

(12:15):
this is a damn cooling. I mean, not like popping off,
but I mean like I like the building anyway. Chicago's dope.
In her book The Futures, author Emily Lambert was writing
all about the economics, and she was explaining the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange and so forth. She shared why Chicago and
onions are so naturally intertwined. Do you know anything about this? No?
I didn't either, So Lambert writes, and I quote, onions

(12:37):
were faded to trade in Chicago. The name of the
city was derived from chicaqua, the Native American word for
a stinky wild leak plant that grew around the river.
Chicago is basically a swamp. Before people got there and
the conditions, people were like, oh, we don't camp there,
Like that's it's right by the lake. It's just rats
and onions. Nobody goes there, right. So now this chicaqua,

(12:58):
this is one. This was the Miami or the Miami
tribes word for the area. But other people, other indigenous
tribes in the area, they had their own term for it.
But yet all of them seem to basically want to
point out that this place is stinky as hell. Returning
to a Lambert, she says, quote Chicaqua is the Miami
Tribes name for the region on which the city and
campus sits, and is said to be associated in the

(13:20):
naming of Chicago. It refers to the marshy environment where
wild leaks, garlic, and onions grow, giving the area a
strong and pungent fragrance. Other tribes of the region referred
to the area as the place of onions, and legends
of a great skunk who devoured humans and covered the
land and its pungent spray. So it's like if you
had a hell of a good candle yes, and it

(13:42):
smelled like skunk. But you know what, though, I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna get on onions. Onions are amazing.
I love onions. I'm all about like the album Family,
This fertile ground. Where is where our onion conspiracy takes place?
Now in this land where the great skunk devours people
and leaves the land shrouded in skunky aroma, Chicago is
where we're gonna meet our anti hero. You're ready to

(14:03):
meet Vincent Cassuga. He was a farmer from New York.
He was in place called Pine Island. It's a small
town down by the New Jersey border. Kasuga had a
big spread, about five thousand acres of a black dirt farm.
And black dirt is like really fertile, rich earth. So
he was growing celery, carrots and onions and lots of
onions and so so that you can picture him because

(14:23):
Suga was not a big man. He stood about five
feet four. He comes from Eastern European roots and he
was born in America the nineteen fifteen. He started farming
in the US and the thirties. His farm was productive, profitable.
He's very good at it. Two of his biggest clients
the U. S. Army and Campbell Suit. So everybody was
eating his onions now. Because Suga had a scrappy side
to him. He was a little bit of a totjof

(14:44):
spark plug of a man. Dude was driven by will.
He was just like about it. And he always kept
a revolver on him and a billy club making case
got the revolver away from him, make a billy club.
I think he would like the billy clubs. The intro. Yeah,
that's like a this off. I just I didn't have

(15:05):
a Chile. Those things will not okay. Now, my dude, Cossuga,
Now you know, he's the kind of guy who shoots
first and asked for forgiveness later, just like all good Catholics,
you know. But and all truth he did contain multitudes.
He was a devout Catholic. The dude, I might say
devout Catholic. He donated millions to the Catholic Church, so
much that the Vatican invited him out to Rome to

(15:27):
have private audiences with the Pope. He got the whole
v I p pass. Yeah, not one pope, three popes.
He had private on three popes. Not only that, he
got a ride up and down in the Pope's private
paper elevator, which I didn't even know that was a thing.
Apparently they got this like little cart that you shoved
up and down anything. It's all gold, oh you know it.

(15:48):
You know, a deep red carpet, gold everything. No, perhaps
it was his resolute faith. I don't know, but something
gave Cossuga the strength to go on when others would
turn back. You know, it's like that. There was one
time he crashed his plane, so he owned his own plane. Yeah,
he was flying a friend home to us. We go
in New York, somewhere up in there among the clouds.
He's like, you know, how to change my mind, I'm
gonna go to Pine Island. So he starts to go

(16:09):
on two extra miles. That's really testing. Your fuel tank
did not pass the test. Plane runs out of gas
in the air. He has to ditch it, he crashes
and totally walks away from the crash. So he's and
he's hospitalized for weeks. He had to wear a full
body cast, and then when he was like done, he
just checked himself out of the hospital and went back
to farming. Because that's amazing because usually you're here, Oh

(16:31):
he crashed his plane. Yeah, not this area. So in
the nineteen thirties, he gets involved in the stock market,
and that's what will bring us to all of the criminality.
But first a little break for some commercials and some capitalism,
and then we'll be back with the commercial involving onion.
Oh yeah, alright, Elizabeth, Okay, Elizabeth. So we're in the

(17:13):
nineteen thirties. Vincent Kasuga has just gotten involved in the
stock market. He's like, I'm doing well as a farmer.
I'm going to invest now. Admittedly, this was not the
thinking of most people at the time, because there was
a little thing called Black Tuesday that wiped out most
of the stock market. Everyone else is like, to hell
with the stock market. That is legalized gambling. Not Kissuga.
He's like, that's legalized gambling exactly. So he decides to

(17:35):
get involved, and he's like, I think I can make
a fortune there, and he was wrong. He goes into
the thirties, he loses everything. His first pray about he
and his wife nearly had to like hawk the farm
that he was betting on wheat futures, and then the
prices shifted as a telling you boom. He lost it
all on margin calls. He goes to tell his wife,
and his wife's like, that's it, You're out, and he's like, okay, okay, baby,

(17:57):
I promise no more trade and wheat futures, wheat futures. Yeah,
you have to open all the other but not ever again, babe.
So that she should have like made him be a
little more specific, because, like I said, a few years later,
he's out there and he's deep in the futures market.
He was flying to Chicago every week so he could
go trade. He lives in New York, He's got his

(18:17):
bone pilots. On Monday morning, why is Chicago hangs out
trade for like three or four days. Thursday flies back
and does she think he's out like plowing the field.
I don't know. She didn't tell me all if you
need me, yeah, I don't know. Then she hears the
places like called dirt it. I'll tell you that. Vance No,
I think that. I think she had to be aware
of it. Yeah, so you know, anyway gets back. Isn't

(18:41):
it worth fun to imagine she had no idea? Oh yeah,
she's just in there, like you know, making let's have
peanut butter brittle and just on her own, just having
some me time, listening to her stories, living your best life.
So dope to the guild, all of mom happy, mother's
little helpers. He's got a fistful helpers. Okay. Anyway, so dude,

(19:04):
he gets good at trading. Cassuga starts not losing out
everything and his wife's money and all of everything on
the futures market. So he starts making bank. He starts
getting really good at He starts buying Cadillacs for his brokers.
That's how good he's getting at it. Multiple brokers, multiple Cadillacs.
Not just like Steve got your catalect, more like Steve,
Gary Lionel and Anton gil got y'all got covered you two, Joaquin,

(19:28):
But there's one there's this one story about him. But
it's like I was reading and I'm like, what a jerk.
So anyway, I think, guy, he's he's giving cars to
his broker's right, there's supposed to be gifts. He's riding
around one time and uh, well, I'll just put it
to this way quote from a book he said. He
presented a broker name Nate Wertheimer, who was at one
point a chairman of the Murk that's the Mercantile Exchange,

(19:51):
with a big, fancy Cadillac. Fifteen minutes later, they were
driving down Michigan Avenue when Kassuga, in the backseat, put
his dirty feet on the ceiling of the car. We're
finmer told him to take his feet off the ceiling
of his car. Your car, Kassuga asked, and then stuck
his feet through the canvas ceiling. That's like the Charlie
Murphy story about Rick James and the white couch is.

(20:13):
But at the same time, it's like, he just gave
you your couch, Nie Murphy, but he just he just
gave you a car. But you want to get it
detailed afterwards. Yeah, I think they're both jerks. I mean,
I don't know what everyone everyone's jerk in the start
in life. Everyone life, you're going to broaden it just
going all throwing the net wide, all right, you leave

(20:33):
my sister out of here. Sorry. Anyway, back to kiss
the dude. He like, as I'm trying to convey, he's willful,
he's controlling, and he's gonna do what he's gonna do.
Be it his you know, it doesn't matter you're his
wife or his broker. To hell with you. So if
you just keeping things, you know, like modern, have you

(20:55):
bought eggs lately? I have? Have you seen the prices? Yeah, yikes,
they're coming back down, but bikes, So, like you may
be wondering what the hell egg producers, like, why did
eggs suddenly go up in price? Right? They jumped up
by six over the course of the last year. A
dozen of grade at large Grade E eggs was a
dollar seventy nine. A year ago they were four five.

(21:18):
Oh yeah, I know, we're yeah, we're screwed on that.
But yeah, across the country, the averages are bitter about this.
So anyway, as you pointed out, egg prices started to fall,
they've already fallen about fifty percent back down. Wasn't that
because of avians? I've seen arguments on both sides. One,
I've seen that avian flu wiped out sixty million birds, right,
and so obviously then you have the supply and demand issue. Uh.

(21:39):
And I also heard that I think it was what
the U. S d A was telling home farmers not
to have chickens because they were worried that that's the
whole pandemic chicken thing. I don't think that affected the
market anyway, but yeah, but a lot of people I
know were like, oh, I got chickens, Like you want
to buy eggs from meat when? Oh interesting you and
your but I mean black market egg people. Oh yeah. Well,

(22:01):
after those fifty or sixty million chickets were destroyed or
whatever it was, the prices started to fall right. Well, ultimately,
what you notice is it's about still supply and demand.
You know, there is still an economic theory at work
underneath all of this, which is supply controls demand, demand
control supply. Do you have this interaction? Right? Last time
I went to the store, they were eleven? Don't are
you kidding me? Ding? Wow? That's insane? Well, my du

(22:26):
kasuga right, he's like inspired by these types of crazy
price sikes. He's like, you know, what to hell with these? Like,
you know, oh, I'm gonna get futures. He's like, what
if I could like kind of control the price and
by either controlling supplier demand. Well, I don't know enough
people to control demand. I can control supply though. He
starts getting into it right. So his first time he practices,

(22:47):
he makes a trading places style bet. He goes out
and he makes a weather bet. He says, okay, he
purchased a bunch of onion futures, and he bets on
the price to rise, and then to guarantee that the
price rises, he goes down to the local weather bureau
and he bribes them to put out a fake weather
service issuing a frost warning. So the price goes up
because the frost warning. But the mercury it never fell.

(23:10):
There was no frost. It never went below fifty degrees,
so onion surplus was there. The market was like boom.
He made a bunch on on that, right, He's like, oh,
that was a good score. I bet I can go
bigger because that was not enough for so market manipulation
was one thing. But he's like, what if I could
totally control the market, and what if I didn't have
to rely on lies and false crop reports or weather reports.

(23:32):
He's like, what if someone could do that? Like control
the market. That would be a huge fortune. And nobody
will look for onions. So if someone did that, that
person would be a master scammer. And he's like that
person hits up his business partner, Sam Segull, and he's like, Yo, Seegull,
I got I got I got a new score. And

(23:53):
he's like, oh, hit me with it. He lays it
out for him. He's like, oh, bet, I'm down. Let's
do this. So the two of them they start basically
setting up everything they'll need to control the onion market
of America. On New York exactly. This dude has a
nephew who's still alive, Harvey paffen Roff. He was talking
to NPR about this and he recalled what he knew

(24:14):
of his uncle's onion hoarding. So Harvey paffen Roth said, well,
he was building it was a big shed of corrugated aluminum,
I mean huge, and he had a conveyor in there
and he was filling it with onions. So he was
stock buying all the onions from his farm in the
trading pits of Chicago. Vincent, his business partner Sam Siegel,
bought up all the available futures contracts for onions by

(24:35):
the winner of nineteen fifty five, they had done the impossible.
You may be wondering, Elizabeth, what is the impossible, Elizabeth?
What is the impossible? Great question, Elizabeth. According to prof
he owned all of the longs in the futures market,
and he owned all of the onions in the United States.
So basically he had cornered the market. He owned all
the onions in the United States. That's let's say he

(24:58):
buys onions from farmers and California, from California to New
York to Texas, Minnesota, everywhere, Vidalia, the walla wall is,
everywhere that they had good sweet onions, red onions, white onions.
He was like, send them my wet you know it,
pearl onions. So they start stockpiling them and effectively they'd
start taking them off the markets, and now the supply

(25:20):
starts going down, down, down, because onions, like apples, can
last for a while on the marketing called storage in particular,
so it doesn't take kasukan seagull long. They end up,
as I said, controlling about of the onions in the
Chicago market, which represents most of the United States agricultural products. Right,
So what does this mean in real terms, what do
you mean? Like they owned the onions right well to

(25:42):
control the market. If they control they can run the
price up for the onions, which is what he did.
So he starts to drive the price up as he
dwindles the supply, right, says, less and less onions going
to markets. He's holding them away from the market. I
have like six for you. That means like in the fifties,
if you had French onions soup you were eating sue this.
Oh yeah, you're pretty much only some good trick to

(26:05):
suit this. So, now that he has the onion market
pretty much controlled, he starts buying up onion futures and
that's going to guarantee his huge paid eight down the line.
So he also now to do that, he'll need to
control all the other onion growers in America. So this
is what he sets to do next. So November and
December fifty Kasuga calls a meeting of his new de
facto onion syndicate right, and he brings together with this

(26:26):
consortion with growers and wholesalers, distributors, and he tells them
the plan. He informs that he wants to buy onions
from all of them, right, and he'll set the price.
He's like McDonald's with potatoes. He's like, this is the price.
He's like, I'm I'm paying a dollar six d a bag.
And they're like okay. And these are big time onion guys, right,
so they can get prices. They feel they can set
prices too. But they didn't buy onions by the bag.

(26:47):
They buy him by the train car, right. So that's
nine hundred sixty dollars per train cars what he's saying essentially, right,
So in this one train car, that's about six hundred
fifty pound bags of onions. So there was another VISal
when his deal that he presented to these guys, he's like, okay,
you all have to agree not to bring any onions
to market before the end of the trading season, which

(27:08):
is in March. So that's the future trading season. So
that means until at least the end of the March
of the next year. He has all these gathered men
make their promise that they will allow him to buy
up all their onions, so they're still making money, but
then control the prices will drive up prices and then
they can release them back onto the market. Everybody wins
blah blah blah. Right, so what are people supposed to
do for French onion soup for Christmas? New Year's Eve

(27:31):
blom and onions. They're they're they're they're doing it for
the next year for fifty six people have un till March, right, yeah,
so they're basically you're gonna have the huge surplus come
out because right now all the harvest stuff everybody's called, well,
they're they're basically living off the onions from earlier. Okay,
so you wouldn't notice it until like Easter. That's when
you're exactly eastern good. Okay, when you when your family

(27:55):
is sitting down for your Easter brunch at the outback steakhouse,
you're like, the blooming onion is fifty dollars anyway, So
so well they're doing this. Chicago Mercantile Exchange is getting
rumors that there's a fluctuation onion prices start, people starting
to notice it, and there's like the supplies dwindling, prices
are going up. Kassuga tells the growers, we've got this
market under control, if you boys want to cooperate now,

(28:18):
He's like basically telling we got it on lock, do
not mess this up and try to go out there
and make money right now because the prices are going
up and everyone's like, okay, now, if you want to
do some trading places money on your onions, which is
what Cassuga wants to do, you buy futures contracts, right,
So you tell an onion buyer, I'll make a contract
with you come September, I'll sell the bag onions for
three dollars. Right, And if the price is four dollars

(28:39):
for a bag of onions, you now lose a dollar
on every bag because it's going up. The prices down
to two dollars, you make a dollar on every bag
on right. So that but if you can drive the
price down, you can guarantee that you make your money.
That's Kassuga's plan, right, He's gonna drive the price down,
even though right now he's driving it up. Right. So
the onion cartels is not particularly enthused about all Kassuga's
market eploys are. They're pretty decent guys, but he had

(29:01):
them leverage because they're like, well, if he does this,
I'll lose it. He could work this against me, so
they're feared is turned against them. So now they let
him set the prices for the market. So Kasuga warns
in the onion car tell members that if any of
them choose not to go along with his market moves,
well then he and seagull Quote would dump the onions
on the market and decimate prices. Everybody's terrified, so this
is gonna be a big tissue. So they're forced to

(29:23):
play Kasuga's game. Everyone's going along with it, and they
now have to purchase roughly all of the car loads
that they can, and they're just putting them into cold storage.
They end up controlling eight and a half million pounds
of onions. Oh my god, the onion guys exactly. So
they start they just start stockpiling onions and warehouses, worrying
about like how they smell going home to their wives,

(29:44):
and prices keep climbing. The money there, there's just still
making money. I can smell the Ksuga. So the Kasuga's
onion car power, it's pan off big time right on.
Prices continue. They're up to four dollars a bag, and
remember he started a dollar. So they're all happy with this.
But they're all cooperating under the standing the agreement would

(30:06):
remain secret if anybody speaks about it, this smoky back
room deal, they'll all be busted. Right, This is totally
illegal what they're doing. So the idea was to keep
a secret. Now that's the idea, not the reality, right, right.
So the thing about someone like Vince Kasugas, they never
know when enough is enough because there's never enough. As
long as there is more for them, they want them
more to right. So he would should have been happy

(30:29):
making his long daddy money off market manipulations. But no,
he wants to drive the price of onions up and
then he wants to drive it back down. That's gonna
take a lot of coordinated effort. So he pulls a
double cross on the onion cartel because he's like, look,
these guys are gonna be a problem for me, and
there's too many. He crossed the onion cartel. He only
needed the onion cartel to help him drive the prices up.
Is he he doesn't need their help to drop the

(30:50):
prices down? Is he the el Choppo of the onion chop,
the el chopped onions? So once he hasn't all the
it's like purchasing stockpiled they're redundant. The other one I
haven't thought this through, because they're like, oh yeah, we're
gonna help roll in this together. What are you doing
now he's got your onions. So he decides it's gonna

(31:11):
be soon time to release the onions. So New Year's Eve,
the Onion Car tells, they told you controls nine gay
percent of the onions and they are all in cold
storage around Chicago. So Becasuga starts working the other deal,
he starts deciding how he's going to short the price
of onions. So he contacts a few people that he
trusts in the Onion Car tell and he decides, like
some angry god of gravity, this is how I'm gonna

(31:32):
make the prices plummet. And they're like, okay, well we'll
lay it on me. So, because he had one other
problem that all the onion growers no onions rot. This
can only go for so long. They're doing it over
the winter, so that really helps him because these onions
are basically frozen in box cars in Chicago. But it's
gonna get cold. It's like stop being cold in March

(31:53):
when exactly right, and you don't want like train cars
sitting in mud with stinking onions, right, So the onions.
They've been stored and there's like, you know, just car
train car loads everywhere that you can imagine in the
train yards, just filled with onions. So they realize some
of them are starting to turn, so they they take
the train cars and they move them out of Chicago

(32:13):
and they send part of them to Iowa, and then
they have the people in Iowa repurpose them. So they
take the onions and clean them up and rebag them,
and you shoot and sell the ones that are sailable
and then dish the other ones, and then they bring
them back. The people in Chicago see more trainloads of
onions coming and they're like, oh my god, there's even
more onions. So the price goes down further. Onions. I

(32:35):
bet you they took the mushy onions and made them
into those reconstituted onion rings. Yeah, I think you're probably right.
They net them. They're all mushy onions. Oh yeah, the
onion rings are all it's wasted onions like baby people.
So they've got hundreds of box cars now sitting all
around Chicago. The only thing left for Cassuga to do
now is is to screw his partners in the onion

(32:58):
cartel and and work post side. It's against the middle,
the middle being him. So after this little break, I'll
tell you how he's going to screw the Onion cartel,
screw him. Okay, so Elizabeth, last we left the story,

(33:31):
Chicago was swamped with onions, just just rife with them, right,
just onions in every train, heard, every box card. It's
just there's nowhere for hobos to. People are walking down
the street and they reach in their pocket for their keys,
on falls out. So because you guys, I tell you
he just needs a couple more weeks for his plan

(33:53):
to hold together, and then he's going to screw his
cartel members and then short the price and be the
only one to make big. But he does need a
couple of them to help him out, because you know,
he's feeling a little guilty and he's like, look, you guys,
help me, like I like a couple of years. One
of the co conspirators, this dude named Dave Slinger. So
he contacts his boy, David Slinger, and he's like, hey,
this is the plan. So Slinger tells us the other

(34:14):
half of the phone call, and he tells us this
in congressional testimony. So going from his congressional testimony. Along
about the twentieth of January, I had onions. I had
my Indians all hedged, and I got rid of all
of them, and I went on a ski trip and
broke my leg and I was confined to the hospital
in Walsaw. And along about the first February, I received

(34:35):
a call from Mr Cassuga and he wanted me to
call William Garring and suggest to him that we go
short the market. I was completely dumbfounded because I thought
they were on the long side of the market. I
do not know exactly what was said after he made
that suggestion, but I was left with the impression that
he had reversed his position, that he was shorting the market,
and possibly his conscience was bothering him, and he wanted

(34:56):
Gearing also to get in on the short side. I
told him that I didn't think that. I thought that
they were going to reverse their position and go short
the market. The group should be called together and should
do it together. Now. Mr Cassuga answered that that would
never do it, would wreck the market in a matter
of minutes and would go down to fifty cents. That
the only way to do it was to control it

(35:16):
somewhat and only one person knows about it. I said,
all right, I will call William Garring, and so I
called him, and William Garring absolutely wouldn't have anything to
do with it. He said, I won't do anything less
all the group backs together. Don't think i'd call him
Mr Cassuga back. I believe that was the last conversation
I had with him until some time in the summer.

(35:38):
Doesn't that sound the congressional testimony. I don't even know
the dude. I talked to him one time that if
you like how they're like, if we're gonna short this,
we're gonna short this together. Ex fact, they're screwing them together. Well,
in for a penny, in for a pound together. So
it turns out everyone was not as greedy as Cassuga was,

(35:58):
so he basically miscalculate it. He's like, yeah, we're all
green heads guys, right, They're like, oh no, like no,
we're onion buddies, and you're a bad guy exactly, because
is like, well that's on y'all. I got God in
a and a gun. I ain't gonna let that stop me.
So come March, when the new trading season kicks off
for the futures. Kassuga went ahead with his plan. He
was like, well, I told him, they know what's happened.

(36:20):
So he hadn't worked out so hard to control all
of the onions in America to miss out on a
huge profit. So he and Siegel, they decided time to
release the Strategic Reserve of onions. It immediately wreaked havoc
on the market. On February one, totally, god, you caught
that ninety six, the price of a March future for

(36:42):
a fifty pound bag of onions was a dollar to
a dollar twenty five. That's on February one, right, Kasuga
releases the Strategic Reserve of onions, and then on March
tewod the price for a fifty pound bag was forty
four cents. On March five, I'm sorry, it was about
fifty cents. I'm March fifth and it falls to forty
four cents and stays there. By March fifteenth, they had

(37:04):
fallen to ten cents ten cents for a bag. He
got up to four dollars to ten cents, and dollar
six was about what market price should be. He going
around all the stores and where the price tag is
he puts a little sticker of him pointing that says
I did that. It's like the Cossuga special. But this

(37:26):
was the lowest price ever recorded in the Chicago merke
for fifty pounds onions. That's onions soup for everybody. Coincidentally,
this was just in time for Cossuga's future contracts to
come do. That means the onions that he promised people
to buy at whatever the price was March he was
they were now worth a fraction of the price of
what anybody would expect. So he comes in and has

(37:48):
to buy up all the onions and he just turns
him over to the market. He makes a fortune, so
huge profits for Cossuga, none for the onion cartel except
for you know, his buddy Siegell And uh yeah. So
now the price for about go onions fell so low
it fell below the cost of the bag. The onions
were sold bad. A fifty pound bag of onions cost
twenty cents the bag. It was the fifty pounds of

(38:11):
onions inside ten cents. So people were keeping the bag
because it was more valuable. Like here it is dumped
the onions right. Consia's former partners in the onion cartel.
They lose fortunes, right because they're all holding up all
they're waiting to sell their onions. They you know, so
whatever they had not given him. So most of the
onion growers of America they also lose their shirts. They
had been buoyed by the artificial prices, thinking all, this

(38:32):
is gonna be a great season, so they're thinking of
taking out loans, doing stuff. Then the prices suddenly drops
into like a one week time So now that when
the market craters, everyone's got all these worthless onions. A
fifty pound bag of you know, that's now we're ten cents.
That's about a four thousand percent fall in value. I
think I think it's four thousand percent. I'm not a
commodities brooke. I don't know these things. But whatever it was,
no one was prepared for it, no one but Vincent CoA.

(38:55):
So this raised an interesting question, which is what do
you do with all the excess onions that are now
suddenly everywhere, like onions are essentially worthless and just plaguing Chicago.
They're just everywhere. There's loading docks, train yards, produced warehouses
jam packed with onions. The onion farmers in the area
are just giving up, dude. There was this cat up
in Hollandale, Minnesota who was so disgusted with the state

(39:18):
of onion markets he plowed under his whole field just
in protest. He destroyed the whole crop, like the hell
with this, like made a big scene and stink about it.
He's like, I'm not wasting my time on some worthless onions.
But still if you're not, If you can't plow under,
what do you do? You go to bird's eye and
you say, freeze them. Well, there's millions of metric tons
of useless onions that are on the market in Chicago. Elizabeth,

(39:41):
to sort through this, I'd like you to do me
a favorite. Close your eyes and picture it. You are
the head nun in charge of a Catholic orphanage on
the South side of Chicago. As the mother's superior, you
could send one of the novices out to get groceries
and around errands, but you like to keep a spirit
of human so at the orphanage you insist everyone takes

(40:02):
a turn getting the groceries and running errand today is
your turn. You head out into the Chicago streets a
stiff cold breeze rushes past you. You clutch your bags
to your side to brace against the winter winds. After
a short johnt you catch a street car and head
to the local market. At your local market, you discover
something odd is happening. The green grocer is standing outside

(40:22):
the store. Next to him is a pyramidal pile of
bags of onions, and he's practically begging people to buy
a bag. When you pass them, he shouts, hey, sister,
if you buy a dozen eggs, will throwing a bag
of onions for free for the kids. If he knows
you've got the orphanage. The same is you already have
all the eggs and onions you need, you bottom ahead
of time because you know the kids are gonna want them.
You're like, oh, these prices are amazing. After you do

(40:45):
your shopping, you plan to head down to the cobbler
to check on some shoes that you had a novice
drop off. You want the kids to have some fresh
sold shoes when they put their winter shoes away at
the end of the season. Spring is arriving fast. It's
mid March, and you can practically smell the coming blossom.
You think to yourself. The poet Pablo and Neruda would
be beside himself, I think, and with onions. So as

(41:07):
you walk past the gas station, you hear the owner
of the station calling out to people like a carnival barker.
He shouts, you fill up your tank, I'll throw one
a freight bag onions. Like, shake your head and wonder
if you missed a new bulletin what's up with all
the onions? As you watch some kids throwing them into
the Chicago River just like Duncan. Later on, on your

(41:29):
way back home, you top on the street car. You
pass by where the stockyards run off to the distance,
and you see a flatbed truck loaded down with onions.
It's backs into a feed lot. The stockyard guys begin
to toss the bags of onions into the hog pens, right,
but they're careful to keep the bags. The bags are baptable.
But there that's the most valuable part of this operation.

(41:49):
And you wonder if this onion diet will result in
a more savory hand. Probably. I mean, think about all
the hogs that eat like wild like the acorns and stuff.
Oh yeah in France. Yeah, so you're about that life,
you know, you're like, that's gonna be some delicious asshog. Yep,
I'm just like licking my lips looking at them pigs
and their own films, which you're also wondering, where are
all these onions coming from? Chicago is getting back to

(42:11):
its roots? So how much was all this market manipulation
worth to Cassuga? Now these guys all of Chicago, right,
he make how much did he make? Well, all told
said and done, he pocketed about eight point five million
from his great onion scams, and that's about nine million

(42:34):
off of onion future. Now when you make that kind
of money off of market manipulation, and there's evidence of
what you did because you called together an onion cartel
and you decided to betray those same men and bankrupt
some of them buddies. Yeah, well, some of them are
going to sue you. That's just what they're kind of do,
which is what happened to Kassuga. But if you can
believe it, Cassuga is like, the hell with that, I'm
suing you for breaking breach of contrast to everybody. So

(42:57):
Kasuga's lawsuit is going. Oh, he winds his way through
the courts. The lower courts affirm cassuga side of the lawsuit,
the defendant appeals, the case goes all the way up
to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has to decide
the onion futures case. In a nineteen nine the Supreme Court,
here's the Cassuga onion cartel lawsuit, and in January they

(43:18):
sided in favor of Cassuga. That's just some good capitalism.
So but that's not the end of the story, because
before the Supreme Court decided to take Cassugas back in
the in the cartel lawsuit, a future American president got
mixed up in the onion mess. Can you guess which one?

(43:39):
I'll give you a hint, Michigan. I don't give another hint.
Not Nixon, Enter future president Gerald Ford, the congressman at
the time from Michigan. We always forget about for I did,
and it's right there for again, and yeah, you know,

(44:04):
we're just always gabbing about that. And it's like every
time I walk into the headquarters or read our stitching
bitch sitting there, I'm like, let's just list the presidents
and then you go and then we forget. We skipped,
we're missing we skip poke again. Now forward. He's like
from a place where there's a ton of onion farmers,
and he's a young congressman, so he's gonna do the
business of the people. So Forod gets in there and

(44:26):
he's got all these angry Michigan onion farmers on his line,
and he's like, damn it, you can't bankrupt and nearly
bust all these good farmers. And so he goes after
Kassuga the market manipulations. He goes to Florida Congress. He
drops some fresh legislation. He's like, look at this, and
it's there. It is the Onion Futures Act. It's gonna
be a bill he proposes to protect onion growers from

(44:46):
the greed heads like Vincent Kasuga, the congressman forward. He
puts to forward his bill to make all these type
of market antics illegal. And the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa. Yeah, I know, he made us look bad.
He busted a lot of people. But that's anti capitalism.
So they fight against it. They're like, they file a
lawsuit trying to block it. They alleged that this will

(45:07):
restrict free trade. So it's the same line you always hear,
which was total horse pucky. But anyway, the Onion Future
Is Act. It made a lot of good market sense,
and so the bill gets brought to the floor, it
gets voted on, it passes presidents, and Howard signs it
into law. And the onion farmers were like, yeah, we
like ike. Yeah, well, I mean it's like you have
that we like well, you know, because it's anyway. They

(45:34):
they say, it's going to get in the way of
free trade. Suga is getting in the way. He is
free trade. That's what free trade looks like. The Onion
Future Is Acting makes it illegal to sell a futures
contract on a load of onions anywhere in America. Right,
So that same yere N six, the Commodities Exchange Authority,
it brings an action against Cassuga and his business partner Siegel.

(45:55):
The complain alleges that the two men had conspired quote
with a group of other persons connected with growing up
or trading onions and actions allegedly designed to increase or
to prevent a decrease in the price on the mercantile exchange. Basically,
they conspired against everybody because Soga being the plane crashing,
market manipulating spark plug of a man you know who's

(46:15):
cool with the and Ability club. He's like, I'll fight
you all. So he goes and he hires a fanciast lawyer,
and he fights the case, all of the cases, any cases, right,
And he cites the uncertainty of whether he says, this
is the nature of farming. Crops fail. What are you
looking at me for? I think this is my fault.
Sometimes crops are bountiful, sometimes they're not. All I did
was make big money on market dynamics. He even says,

(46:38):
and I quote, if it's against the law and make
money in the United States, then I'm guilty. WHOA I
told you guys, he's got back bumped. So yes, sir,
I would say, you are, you are guilty. But he
you know, since he's now stolen essentially ninety millions or
siney something million dollars about ninety four from small farmers
and other distributors and wholesalers, you know, this is like

(47:00):
stealing toilet paper from Walgreen. So the cops don't go
after him. No, nothing happened to this dude. He doesn't
go to jail. True to the nature of justice in America,
and according to the American law and Ordercausuga is able
to essentially steal ninety four million dollars from small farmers
and all these other people, and all us to do
is just hire some lawyers to fight a couple of
cases in court, goes at the Supreme Court and they're like, yeah,
give him the big thumbs up, and nothing happens. The

(47:22):
Commodities Exchange Authority they bring a lawsuit against Cassuga. They're like, well,
maybe our lawsuit will work. Nope. C A loses in
court to court ruled that c A what had failed
to show Kassuga attempted to manipulate upward prices of November
futures on the Chicago American Dollar Exchange and prices of
Bunion cash. Blah blah blah, what how they had receipts
had to do like, you know, get anybody to say it.

(47:43):
Everyone knew what he did. It has been an open secret,
but they couldn't prove it in the courts, Like we
don't care. If that's the facts, you gotta prove it,
Like this sucks. But Kassuga is like, yeah, that's why
I pay for the good lawyers, and so he has
to pay. Eventually, a very small price for this injustice,
he loses his license to trade commodities for a whole
ten months, slap on the wrist concent and then he

(48:06):
has to pay a modest fine. And that was that.
He never spended hand jail, never had any real consequences.
He pulls off the biggest scam in American farming history
and is padded on the back by the Supreme Court. Then,
in America, the message has always been the same. If
you're gonna steal, steal big. It's just the thing, right
And by the way, the Gerald Ford Onion Futures Act,
that's still a law, and it gets cited as precedent law.

(48:27):
In two thousand and ten, motion picture box office receipts
were added to the Onion Futures Act, making it illegal
to speculate on future box office earning because people are
starting to do that. Yeah. And then in the next year,
two thousand and eleven, that's when the Chicago Mercan Dogs
Change stopped selling pork billy futures because they're like, look,
we just want to get off this whole yeah. Yeah,
so you know, but it's not illegal to sell a
pork belly future. It is illegal to sell an onion

(48:49):
future all thanks to Vincent Cassuga. Right so, and also
you know Gerald Ford, So thank you Gerald Ford. Well,
he's gotta gotta fun to me. It's always funny. Gerald Ford.
The dude pardon Nicks. And he fell down the steps
of Air Force one a bunch, and he made onion
futures illegal. That's quite a legacy, just I'm telling you,
Kick Rocks Coolidge. All right, Well, one final interesting twist

(49:12):
for you, because Suga went back to futures trading after
all this once he got his license back after the
ten months in the like you know, the penalty box,
and he primarily focused on pork belly futures and potatoes
at that point and eventually went back to farming and
commodities broken. But he also did something kind of fun
in the sixties. He built an inn in Pine Island,
New York. He named his place the Jolly Onion in

(49:33):
just to screw with people. And then he was the
chef of the restaurant and he ran the spot for
years and he even had like, you know, like a
really great sweet onion soup recipe that they still sell.
So he sold the restaurant. The restaurants still open. So
if you're out there in Pine Island you want to
go check in hit the tastes like scams. What is

(49:57):
your ridiculous takeaway? My ridiculous take boy, thank you for
asking the first time so quickly. I don't have one. Okay,
so what's your ridiculous take Okay? Now my ridiculous takeaways
the same thing as from the beginning. Capitalism is some bow.
My ridiculous takeaway is God, I love French onion soup.

(50:18):
That's ridiculousulous. Well, you know, thanks for listening. This was
the Vincent Kassuga onion scam. You know, folks, you can
find us online at Twitter, in Instagram. If you want
to bother, you to connect with us, you know, maybe
like get cozy and comfortable and talk about life. Hit

(50:39):
us up. You can also email us share with us
anything of your thoughts, your feelings, your observations. We're here
for you, folks. That's all we got for you. Thanks
for listening. Ridiculos dryings listed by Elizabeth Dunton and Zarin Burnett,

(50:59):
producing did by by davea Onion Cousting researches by Marissa
Walla Walla Sweet Onion Brown and Andrea song Sharp and
Tears in My Eyes From All of the Onions. Our
theme songs by Thomas Onion chut Lee and Travis Spring
Onion Dotton. Executive produces are Ben A Fresh Bowling of

(51:19):
Fresh Onion Soup and No Gotta Get the Onion Rings
at the Varsity Brown Quiet Say It One More Time.
We Dequeous Crew. Ridiculous Crime is a production of I
Heart Radio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit

(51:41):
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