Scamtown - Extra Virgin Hustle | 7

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

In 2017, Italian authorities uncovered a multimillion-dollar scheme as part of a big Mafia bust. But it has nothing to do with broken legs or hard drugs. Follow the trail as investigators uncover and take down a fake olive oil export empire, designed to fleece unsuspecting American shoppers.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

James, do you cook with olive oil? Oh, every single day. Does it have to be the extra virgin, high quality stuff, or does it not matter to you? I really do love olive oil, so I try to get the extra virgin, pricey stuff. But how do you know that it's the high quality stuff? If I'm being totally honest with you,

I really don't know. I probably couldn't pick it out of a lineup. I just know that it's more expensive. I'm probably totally honest with you, I really don't know. I probably couldn't pick it out of a lineup. I just know that it's more expensive. I'm probably even worse than you because I don't cook with it every day. But most Americans wouldn't know either. And that's why, in a lot of cases, fraudulent olive oil can be more profitable than selling cocaine. Today, we take you through the super lucrative scam of olive oil fraud. So leave the gun, take the cannoli, and get ready for the story of how an international

crackdown crippled one of the biggest Italian mob families. Welcome to Scam Town, an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. I'm Brian Lazzarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life. We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know.

Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and riding that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that. Today's episode, Extra Virgin Hustle. There is a gorgeous region of Italy called Calabria. Right there in the toe of the boot. Think picturesque, timeless villages on craggy hillsides looking out on the Mediterranean.

Blue skies, beaches, incredible food. Some of the best olives in the world are grown there. And people will tell you, meaning, in paradise, there's no crying. Or, you can't complain when you're in paradise. I live in Calabria, the most beautiful region in Italy. Vincenzo Linarello leads a co-op of organic farmers, including olive growers. And though he's a man on a mission and living in paradise, he does have something to complain about.

In my region, there is also the most powerful mafia in the world. The name of this mafia is the Andrangheta. The Andrangheta. It's an organized syndicate of gangsters that has been raining fear on the people of Calabria since the 1800s. And now, they're often considered more powerful than the Sicilian mob. Not only that, the Andrangheta has become one of the most powerful and profitable criminal networks in the world. It has an annual turnover of 60 billion euros. It's like a little European state. It's a big problem for the future of my region.

So what we're saying is, there's a dark side to Paradise. The Andrangheta's role in the region is actually pretty close to what's depicted in the last Equalizer movie, Equalizer 3. That's what you have to decide your fate. Nine seconds. A picturesque Italian village that's totally terrorized by gangsters with a mob. Except for, in real life, they don't have Denzel Washington whooping ass to save their lives. Now, the Equalizer is obviously not based on a real character in Calabria that we know of. It's up to law enforcement and ordinary people to stand up to the mob. And that's far from easy. Mobsters are experts in instilling fear and preying on civilians.

They're ruthless. But sometimes the law strikes back. That music is how Italian TV says breaking news. It's a sensational story from 2017 about an anti-mafia sweep called Operation Providenza. The operation is called Providenza. It's a blow by law enforcement against one of the most powerful Ndrangheta families. Once in a while, against all odds, a mafia bust goes down, even against a powerhouse like Ndrangheta. Which can seem surprising

when you know how much they control. Entire businesses, politics, shipping, the sale of fruits and vegetables in the city of Milan, agriculture in Calabria. The primary purpose here is to control the territory. That's Alessandro Valera. He works for Ashoka, a foundation that supports Vincenzo's work. And he joined our call to translate for Vincenzo, who feels more comfortable speaking in Italian. L'andrangheta oggi è diffusa in tutto il mondo. Andrangheta is now a worldwide phenomenon, but in Calabria, where it comes from, they seek to have absolute control, starting from the countryside and the agriculture.

It starts with agriculture, but it doesn't end there. Over the years, the Andrangheta have shown a dark genius for making money in all kinds of ways. For example, they were a major player in Europe's cocaine trade. And back in the 1970s, they shocked the world with a series of high-profile kidnappings. Like the time the Andrangheta famously grabbed the grandson of American oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, then sent the Getty family a ransom note demanding $17 million.

When the magnate refused to pay, they sent his grandson's ear to a regional newspaper. Weeks later, after Getty finally agreed to pay the tax-deductible $2.2 million, they dumped him at a gas station, alive, but badly battered. And if you haven't seen that movie, All the Money in the World, with Mark Wahlberg and Christopher Plummer, it pretty much tells this particular story. I have never been more vulnerable financially than I am right now. Mr. Getty, with all due respect, nobody has ever been richer than you are at this moment. I have no money to spare.

They've also made fortunes grabbing farmland and squeezing growers through violence and intimidation. Like the time they cut down 13, 20-year-old olive trees, then went to the owner and offered him protection from further attacks from them. And of course, for a price. It's the kind of classic strong-arm stuff that you see in the movies. The Ndrangheta is made up of roughly 150 different clans. One of its leading families

is the Piramalis. The Piramali are royalty. So we are talking here about one of the most important, if not the most important clan of the Ndrangheta ever, since God knows when. That's Anna Sergi, professor of criminology at the University of Essex. She's an expert in the Piramalis. The Piramali overall are known for two main things. One, they are the most entrepreneurial clans of the Ndrangheta. They are very aggressive. Their specialty is in the agricultural business.

They are around the fruit and vegetable market since the 70s. The second thing they're known for is the port of Joyotaro. That's a complicated story, but all you really need to know is that they exercise some control over what goes in and what goes out. That comes in handy when exporting illegal items. They are one of the most multi-faced organized crime groups in the sense that they've managed to grow. And by grow, I mean to change. They have an intergenerational change that very few clans have. This is why you find Antonio Piramali the guy at the

core of this business. Antonio Piramali, the so-called prince of the clan, his roots are in Calabria, but he's a bit different than the old guard. He went to university, he's an accountant, dresses very well, and is more involved in white-collar crime. He largely takes over the clan in 1999, when his father is captured after being on the run for about six years. At the direction of his father to take care of the family, he moves his base of operations from Calabria in the south to Milan in the north. He sets up businesses in tourism, fashion, and construction, which expands the

reach of the Pyramales. Business booms. But then Antonio follows in his father's footsteps by getting busted for racketeering. He does around seven years in prison. And what does he do when he gets out? He gets right back to it. And business booms again. But that leaves him with a problem. The Paramalis have a ton of dirty cash. You see this in every mafia movie. What do you do with all this cash from illicit activities? To make use of dirty money, you have to clean it or launder it. And most criminals do this by moving it around and funneling it into legit businesses. If you remember Breaking Bad, just think Walter White moving his meth money through an Albuquerque car wash. It goes in dirty and comes out looking clean. So basically,

you're just getting normal profits for a regular business. The question is, how are the Pyramalis going to do this at such a large scale? Well, that's part of the problem. Antonio needs to move millions of dollars. And for whatever reason, it can't all be washed through his businesses in Milan, like tourism and construction. Now, we're not too sure at what point he came up with this idea. Who knows if he was racking his brain trying to solve this problem for a while.

But at some point, we have to imagine he remembers what his home region is famous for. An agricultural product that's also big business. Olive oil. Antonio knows there are big bucks in the making and selling of olive oil, especially by targeting one of the product's biggest import markets, the United States. Globally, the olive oil industry was valued at $22.3 billion in 2022. Of course, Antonio could go after some of that revenue the legit way, by selling real extra virgin olive oil to American consumers, make honest profits while at the same time laundering

ill-gotten gains. But where's the fun in that? Well, if he did that, the story would be over and we're just getting started. No surprise, Antonio goes the greedy route. He decides to clean his dirty money by using a company that sells fake extra virgin olive oil. It's a scam on a scam, a hat on a hat. To pull off this plan, Antonio needs three things, fear, layers, and a partner in America. Fear. This kind of criminal export scheme needs people in different cities. And any one of them could take it down by talking to the police. But a lot of people know that Antonio is more than what he pretends to be. A normal CEO. He's what he's been from the beginning, a creature of entrangata. The reputation of the Piromalli cannot be underestimated. His name, his surname,

his currency. Don't underestimate people who never fuck you over because you're Antonio Piromalli. Next is layers. Anna Sergi explains how the layers are set up to protect the bosses. They are the top layer, and that means that they are completely hands-off from a lot of things. And that's what Antonio did and does in Milan. Antonio layers mobsters between himself and the actual acts of fraud, creating this plausible deniability. So while the cops are out there arresting street-level goons and throwing them in the slammer, he's not taking the rap. It's why taking down a mafia boss is so hard. And then, according to official records, there's the partner in America, the scam's key man. He'll be taking shipments of pure Mali oil with intent to sell to retail chains like Costco and Walmart.

It's got to be a guy Antonio can trust. Someone from Calabria. Someone he's known for years. A guy we're going to call Mr. V. We'll leave it at that. Trust us. We'll explain later. As a young man, Mr. V leaves Calabria and moves to the United States and eventually starts up a handful of businesses, mostly warehouses and distribution

companies that handle cargo coming through the port of New York and New Jersey. So for Antonio, he needs Mr. V to help him commit olive oil fraud on a massive scale. Which is a logistical nightmare. You need a supply chain that can cross an ocean with companies on either end that seem legit. And you need a way around nosy inspectors. Literally nosy. Part of their job is to sniff the oil. Now, to understand the full scope of the Paramelli scheme and the problem that Antonio needs to solve,

you have to know a couple of things. The mechanics of olive oil fraud and the ingenious twist these guys come up with to try and fool the law in two countries. And we have just the right person for that. He's got a rare title, Global Olive Oil Ambassador. I'm heading out tomorrow to the area best associated with olive oil production in Italy.

That's Dan Flynn, former director of the Olive Center at UC Davis. He spoke to us from an echoey room while on vacation in, where of all places? Rome. It is super important to the Italians, and it's almost part of their DNA. I've never met an Italian that didn't love olive oil, and also that didn't think that the area that they came from in Italy makes the best olive oil by far in the world. Italy has historically had the highest reputation globally for the quality of their olive oil, which dates back thousands of years.

The ancient Romans built a lot of their empire with the help of olive oil. And the first cultivation of olives is at least 6,000 years old. And, you know, amazing thing is you can go to these 600-year-old trees, they're still producing olives, they're still making olive oil from them. Flynn is describing trees that are likely to make the highest quality olive oil, the kind of exquisite olive oil he's tasted himself. You get a smell that could be of grass or something from the field. It's just very fresh smelling. We're used to hearing about this with wine. Different wines have different qualities. Olive oil can encompass all kinds of different flavors, and there's certainly a big range that I enjoy

and I think people could enjoy. Okay, I definitely don't have the palate of Dan Flynn. I'm sure very few people can do what Dan Flynn does. But all Antonio needs is for the pure Molly oil to pass random tests by inspectors in Italy and the US. Right. The whole game comes down to two words. Extra virgin.

That's what consumers want, and that's what gets you top price. But it takes time, care, and money to make real extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin is squeezed out of fresh olives. It's pure. No additive is allowed. And sealed in airtight containers. This is the quality stuff. And this is the challenge for Antonio Piramali.

How to pass off the bad stuff as good stuff. Well, in mid-2015, Piramoli's crew starts to hash that out. You need to think of them as deciding really how to do business, right? In every sense. It's just that it's a criminal business. Alice Rizzuti is a lecturer in criminology at the University of Hull. She did her PhD thesis on mafia-type groups in the food sector. Antonio was asking what would have been profitable for the U.S. market, how also to do the fraud, thinking of how to pass the customs check.

So here's the plan they come up with. First, the Piramalis are going to make some false claims about where their oil comes from. They were cheating on the origin, so they were declaring it as Italian. They were getting oils from different countries outside of Italy, from countries like Greece, like Syria, like Turkey. And these were overall lower quality oils. Second, they're going to have millers in Calabria filter and polish this cheap oil to pass it off as extra virgin olive oil. It's called olive pumice oil. That's Dan Flynn again.

And basically that is produced by using a solvent to extract what's left over after you've extracted virgin olive oil. Once the virgin oil is extracted, you're left with just a bunch of wrung-out fruit that millers would just throw away. Till some clever person figured out there's oil left to be had, around the last 5%. And you can get it by taking those olives and basically fracking them.

You can extract just the residual amount of oil with the solvent, and then that's refined, and then you can sell that as olive pumice oil. They had some regular olive oil too, but most of it was defective. They mixed it into the pumice oil to spruce it up a bit more. The European Union describes the kind of bad oil used in frauds as musty and fusty. Musty and fusty. Musty and fusty sounds like a couple of Snow White's dwarves.

You obviously don't have kids. Third, they had to figure out how to get the product past customs. So they decided to import the pomace oil, labeled as pomace oil, to not raise any red flags, and then re-bottle and swap the label in the United States. Next, they have to figure out shipping. Luckily, they already control one of the main ports,

which they're going to use to export this low-grade oil. The port of Gioia Tauro, which is one of the, I would say, strongholds of Andrangheta in Calabria, but also in Italy. We can't assume that the paramilitaries told inspectors to turn a blind eye. But we can say the port of Gioia Tauro is notorious as an international funnel for guns and drugs. So yeah, contraband has been known to slip through. Still, they took the precaution of shipping their product labels through other companies so that port authorities wouldn't catch on that these extra virgin labels went with their cheapo oil, especially in ports outside of their homeland. Some of the labels were actually shipped out of Genoa as rolls of paper towels.

Mr. V then received the zhuzhed up pomace oil and false labels at his warehouse. According to official records, he re-bottled the oil and slapped on the label, selling it as Belfrontoyo Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It came in two types, fruity and unfiltered. To save you from looking it up, Belfrontoyo actually means nice mill. In late June 2015, Mr. V is at the warehouse when the first shipment of oil arrives. All is going as planned.

At past customs, the bottles are ready for labeling. So he pops off the top, takes a taste, and it's awful. And basically says, This is shit. There's no way I can sell this. To which the miller says, and I quote, How do you say that in Italian? Ask the translator on your phone.

You can imagine that's not what the boss wanted to hear. Nope. So the miller sends two new samples. One is still basically all pommas oil. And the other, he cuts with about 30% of actual extra virgin olive oil. With the caveat, it's going to be more expensive. And after some back and forth, they finally hit upon a formula they think is sellable.

Eventually, Mr. V allegedly travels to Italy and meets with Antonio and one of his guys to go over the scheme. Everything in the process had gotten much better, and they decided to have the miller start shipping three containers a month. But even though the scheme was up and running, as the months wore on,

the crew lamented that sales weren't as strong as they had hoped. Antonio, though, had confidence that with a few more tweaks here and there, things could turn around. And they did. Almost a year and a half after the operation got off the ground,

Mr. V allegedly calls Antonio to tell him they've sold everything they had in the warehouse, 200,000 euros worth of oil, money they plunged right back into the scheme to keep the good times rolling. That is until January 26th, 2017. The police in Calabria executed a pre-dawn raid. They arrested men suspected of complicity with the mafia. The suspects are accused of fraud and other crimes. That's a translation from a breaking news report at the time. Now, the initial Operation Providenza raid rounded up 33 men allegedly affiliated with the Piramali gang.

Homes were raided. Mob guys were jammed into police cars. The natural order of things, with the mafia on top, got turned upside down. So what were these other crimes? Stuff you'd expect, like attempted murder and drug trafficking. But they also got them for olive oil fraud. It turns out Italian investigators had been monitoring Piramali's scheme from day one through surveillance and wiretaps.

So the Piramali are constantly under investigation. But the way it comes out is due to the investigations on the family. Anna Sergi said that the investigators probably didn't set out to look for evidence of olive oil fraud. They just stumbled across it, along with the other crimes the wiretaps revealed. And that is what led to the raid. Brian, this reminds me so much of the movie Casino. And everybody began to tumble, one after the other, just like dominoes. Well, shortly after the arrests, high-ranking law enforcement officials hold a press conference.

Here's the chief prosecutor laying out some of the case. It was exported to the United States as pomace oil. Once through customs, it was disguised and the labels were applied, extra virgin olive oil, olive oil of Italian origin. Imagine the enormous economic contamination from the counterfeit products, products that certainly are also harmful to health. Soon, a list of those arrested is released. It's mostly goons, no surprise there. But there's a shocker. The name of a man attached to a long list of serious charges.

People read it and do a double take. Like, what? James, I'll let you say it. Antonio Paramali. The boss. The Don. The guy who's supposed to be, you know, untouchable. The Italian justice system hit Antonio and his gang with a lot of heavy charges. You have money laundering, fictitious registration of assets, and mafia association. And that's a big one. But the olive oil fraud was the most talked about part of Operation Providenza. Because it pulled back the curtain on something that people might have heard about, but didn't know how it worked. So there's this hunger to learn more.

Alice Rizzuti wrote about it in an academic journal called Crime, Law, and Social Change. For those of you who don't subscribe, here's what it says. The Providenza raid was the first time the Italian police managed to firmly connect an active mafia family to olive oil fraud and show how their plots work in practice. And according to Italian authorities, the gang might have made as much as 2 million euros on their exports to America by the time they got nabbed. Still, it's one thing to arrest Antonio. It's totally another thing to convict him. But if Antonio was watching that press conference, probably not very fun for him, and saw the prosecutor and police chief laying out their evidence, I have to assume he was saying to himself, uh-oh.

The wiretapping activity, in fact, made it possible to demonstrate that everything pertaining to the concrete operations of the organization, those concrete operations, a.k.a. the inner workings of the fraud, are laid out by the Italians in a 2,000-page indictment that we got our hands on. Numerous phone calls and meetings are laid out in the indictment. It even shows a conversation between Antonio and one of his guys when problems arose as to how they were going to manage all the money.

You know, how are they going to avoid paying taxes? And at one point, the associate even says that they could end up like Al Capone, arrested for tax evasion and not for anything he actually did. And they laugh. I'm guessing he's not laughing now, although that is pretty funny. That is pretty funny. No, probably not. Well, not funny to him. But that doesn't mean Antonio's automatically going down. He just does what he normally does.

He surrounds himself with high-priced lawyers and pleads not guilty to the charges. Following that, there's a trial. The whole thing unfolds pretty quickly and ends with another shocker. In 2018, about a year after the Operation Providenza raid, an Italian court delivers its verdict to Antonio. Guilty. Now imagine that our friend Alice Rizzuti is the judge handing down the sentence. 19 years and a few months of prison.

19 years and four months to be exact. Of the 10 Piramali gangsters convicted with him, Antonio's sentence is the harshest by far. He appeals, but loses. Today, he's doing hard time in one of Italy's high security prisons. Now, at this point, you might be wondering, what happened to Mr. V? It's a great question. The indictment implicated a host of players, including Mr. V, whose real name is used throughout the indictment.

Here's what it says about him. Real bridgehead of a gang in the USA, where he is the owner and partner and director of a myriad of companies under US and Italian law, all attributable to the Piramali gang, but fictitiously registered to him, identifying the most effective and profitable channel for retail distribution of the huge quantities of oil handled. And at the press conference, the lead prosecutor added,

we have maintained close investigative liaisons with the FBI. So let's say that there certainly was coordination. The FBI being involved is serious, but at the press conference, the prosecutor clarifies that despite the FBI's cooperation with the Italians, quote, there has been no real investigative activity in the United States. There was no desire to create any assumption of suspicion immediately based on the investigation that was developing in Calabria. So, can I drop the bomb about what the U.S. did about Mr. V, the alleged key player on the American side of the giant web of illegal activity? Yeah, I was going to suggest you do it.

Okay, everybody prepare yourselves. They did nothing. Nothing. No charges, no jail time, no plea bargain, nothing. We asked the FBI press office for an interview, but they wouldn't comment. So we filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the case.

Now, in their response, they claim they have no records related to Belle Frantoyo, Operation Providenza, or any of the Piramali Mr. V companies. And that is why we are calling this alleged key player Mr. V, even though the Italian authorities and media have dropped his name all over the place. Not to mention, Antonio says the FBI actually contacted Mr. V. In a recorded phone call Antonio made to his incarcerated father just weeks before the Providenza raids, he explains that he'd recently called Mr. V, who told him that the head of the FBI visited him, gave him a business card, and told him to never go to Italy. So naturally, we wanted to talk to Mr. V ourselves,

and our researcher Mark was able to locate him. We left him some voicemails at his office and sent him some emails, but got no response. Then Mark found his cell phone number and gave it a shot. Hello? Hi, my name is Mark Hay. I'm a researcher with a documentary company and gave it a shot. Hello. Hi, my name is Mark Hay. I'm a researcher with a documentary company that's working on a story about olive oil imports and issues that happen in that business. I understand that you were involved in that field at one point. Is that right?

Years ago. Years ago. I mean, and I understand that there was some involvement with you in a case with some exporter from Italy who wound up in some trouble. I'm not sure what you're talking about, sir. Talking about the case that was called, in Italy they referred to it as Operation Providenza, processing olive oil, pomace oil that was sent to America and then sold as extra virgin olive oil? I have no idea what you're talking

about, sir. The name and businesses related to you came up in documents related to that case. Well, you have proof of these documents. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not interested, sir. I wasn't involved. You know, I have nothing to do with it.

And then he hung up. Alice Rissutti stressed that the Providenza convictions haven't solved the problem of olive oil fraud because it's not just the mob who's doing it. This particularly mafia group, Piromalli, they were not doing anything that different from a legitimate business who is committing food fraud in the olive oil market as well as in other food markets. The difference is clearly that they were investing illicit money, so dirty money.

But there are companies in Italy who are committing olive oil fraud, who are legitimate actors operating illegitimately when it comes to the commission of olive oil fraud. Not to sound naive, but hopefully all of this bad publicity is leading to more enforcement. Like in the Steven Spielberg movie version, there'd be inspirational music and FDA inspectors would be pulling olive oil from the shelves and exposing today's cheaters. We asked our guy Dan Flynn about that. Remember, the former director

of the Olive Center at UC Davis? And he told us, Probably not. I mean, the odds of you being caught are pretty low. For example, the FDA is not out there pulling olive oil off the shelf to check and see if it meets the extra virgin standard. When we made inquiry about it, they said, look, we've got our hands full with bigger fish to fry, such as E. coli and things that can actually kill a lot of people. So

olive oil fraud has kind of dropped down on the list. Flynn added that on the bright side, the olive oil industry does a decent amount of self-policing, and this shouldn't stop people from buying olive oil. Plus, a New York Times story in December of 2023 reported that Italian authorities have been stepping up their crackdowns on phony extra virgin olive oil. So what I think we're learning is this is not a movie. It's real life. And as usual, it's complicated and messy. And musty and fusty. Oh, I see what you did there. But there's a bit of hope. Yeah, there is. In Calabria, in the form of Vincenzo Linarello, who we heard from at the top. Vincenzo

and his growers are fighting back. It's important because it's not just American consumers who get cheated by agricultural fraud. It's the people who work the land and cultivate the things we eat and drink. But here's how they're starting to break free. By responding right away to the mafia's first move. Like when the mafia burned down a grower's barn with all of his equipment, Vincenzo helped organize a national fundraiser. And then this group threw a party and invited reporters. Vincenzo said they looked into the cameras and said, And the farmer added, Last season my sales were down. This year they're booming.

So thank you very much Andrangheta. Keep the attack coming and we'll keep celebrating. But my favorite example of fighting back is how Vincenzo's group responded to the cutting down of those 13 olive trees. They replanted not only 13, but 26, twice as many olive trees of the same age. And they had a celebration. They invited the mayor of the town, the bishop, everyone representing civic society.

And they sent another message to the Andrangheta. And they told them very loudly that if they wanted to cut these ones too, they would plant 52 next time. 52 olive trees next time. I love it. We proved the community can be stronger and that celebrating rather than being silent actually creates the desired effect. That's definitely a note of hope. Now, James, at this point, we've talked

about olive oil so much. I feel like we should kind of do our own taste test between extra virgin olive oil and pommas oil, even though I couldn't find any bel frantoyo. Which is good because that stuff was already gross in 2016. Couldn't imagine it would be much better today. Yeah, I'm not a fan of poisoning ourselves. Let's do it. All right. All right, here we go. Olive oil first.

That's definitely olive oil. I'm going to go backwards. I'm going to start with the pomace oil. Pretty much doesn't taste like anything. That's definitely not as good. Oh, there's definitely a difference. Yep. Pomace oil just taste like anything. That's definitely not as good. Oh, there's definitely a difference. Yep. Pomace oil just tastes like nothing.

And olive oil, you can tell there's a specific type of flavor to it. Yeah. Like, would you say it's a little bit fruity? Maybe grassy? Definitely getting the hint of fruit, although still super mild, I would say. I kind of prefer to add a little salt or balsamic vinegar to it. Oh, definitely, definitely into balsamic. And salt. I'll do salt too.

So we figured out there is a difference between the two. Not that big of a difference though, in our opinion, although I'm sure all the farmers would say differently. But as of right now, stick with the extra virgin olive oil. You know, man, I just prefer cooking with butter. Wow. Curball. On the next episode, the greatest hoax in heavy metal history. Elijah, the drummer, turns around to me and is like, man, what are we doing?

I was like, yeah, this is pretty out there. That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram.

The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lazzarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Jim O'Grady produced this episode. Mark Hay was our researcher. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer.

Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts