Word: mclane
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When he discovered that the Army spent $1,000,000 yearly just to handle : empty milk bottles, McLane cannily worked out a deal to import U.S. machinery for packaging milk in cardboard containers. To pay for the equipment, he borrowed $250,000 from the Dutch reconstruction bank, then signed up The Netherlands' giant Sterovita Corp. to supply the milk, through McLane, for all U.S. forces in Europe...
Coffee Cache. Because he could use Post Exchange permits to transport his milk across the German border without paying customs, McLane got the idea of smuggling coffee into Germany in the; tank trucks he used for bulk deliveries...
...milk, resold the coffee on the German black market for up to $11 per lb. The scheme worked fine until German customs officials got suspicious, arrested him with a 5,500-lb. load ; of coffee. Friends in the Post Exchange service got him freed on $12,000 bail, and McLane promptly skipped the country. The Germans tried him in absence, found him guilty and sentenced him to seven months in jail...
Though he could no longer go to Germany, McLane found he could still make plenty of money there. To PX snack bars he sold, at 21.5? per qt., 250,000 qts. of chocolate milk monthly, all labeled "minimum butter fat content 2.6%." Independent tests in German laboratories showed it was actually skim milk that cost only 10^ per qt. to produce. Though he was forced to cut his price, McLane held on to orders for other dairy products, meat, fresh fruits and vegetables. As he blandly explained, he got and kept his contracts by bribing purchasing officials. Says...
Covering the Trail. At the trial of a Post Exchange official two years ago, McLane turned state's evidence, won his own immunity and identified The Organization as a small group of purchasing agents for the U.S. armed forces who handed out fat Government contracts in return for personal kickbacks of 1% to 5%. All told, McLane said, he paid The Organization some $235,000 by depositing money to an account in Zurich's Credit Suisse. Out of twelve PX officials McLane named, only one, Charles E. Wilson, was tried. He was convicted, fined $5,000 and sentenced...