NEW YORK (AP) - Manhattan hospital clerk Marque Gumbs was doing so
well moonlighting as a peddler of stolen property that he drove a BMW,
shopped at designer stores like Burberry and vacationed in Las Vegas and
Mexico.
But unlike other more common thieves brazenly
living beyond their means, his contraband wasn't jewelry or electronics -
it was toner for copiers and printers.
The $1.5 million scheme at the prestigious Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center exploited what New York City authorities
describe as a largely overlooked, yet lucrative black market for toner
cartridges and other office supplies.
Businesses have long endured employees pilfering
pens, paper clips and other items for personal use, called
"supply-jacking." But schemes like Gumbs' go much further, with the
perpetrators using business accounts to place false orders for more
costly items such as toner, then reselling them at a steep discount.
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, a
large law firm in Manhattan's financial district, recently became the
scene of another toner caper that ended with grand larceny charges
against Adrian Rodriguez, who worked in the duplicating department.
"This defendant didn't just take a box of Post-it
Notes out of the office supply closet," District Attorney Cyrus Vance
Jr. said in announcing the case.
Prosecutors allege the 38-year-old Rodriguez, who
pleaded not guilty this month, ordered more than $376,000 in excess
toner from two vendors over a two-year period. He would sell the
cartridges - worth $80 to $259 a piece - for as little as $10 "out of
the firm's back door ... and using the money to party and otherwise
finance his lifestyle," according to court papers.
During a sting operation in late December,
undercover investigators went to the law firm and delivered a shipment
of cartridges that was marked so it could be tracked. They then watched
as Rodriguez stashed the cartridges away before directing an
unidentified buyer driving a van to pick them up at a loading dock, the
court papers say.
Who buys the stolen toner and the scope of the
thievery in the city, and what the victims have done to keep from
happening again, is unclear. Authorities declined to discuss an ongoing
investigation of the black market and where it's leading, and there was
no response to messages left with the Fried Frank law firm and Memorial
Sloan-Kettering.
Alicia Ellis, a spokeswoman for the National Office
Products Alliance, said the Washington, D.C., trade group has heard
many stories about office products dealers getting ripped off by bogus
clients using stolen credit cards to order products - primarily toner,
but not about employees of legitimate purchasers enriching themselves
with inside toner jobs.
Still, there have been isolated cases.
In 2007, two Pennsylvania men were accused of
stealing $187,000 worth of ink and toner from their office-supply
employer and then selling the goods on the Internet. The same year, an
account executive at a New Jersey stationery supply company pleaded
guilty to stealing 30,000 toner cartridges valued at $1.75 million.
The con game at Memorial Sloan-Kettering dates to
2007, when one of Gumbs' duties as a receiving clerk paid $37,800 a year
was to order supplies from an Office Depot website. Prosecutors accused
him of ordering $1.5 million in cartridges - priced at $200 a piece -
that didn't fit any of the copiers and printers at the hospital.
Gumbs also short-circuited hospital procedures by
having delivery drivers call his cellphone and meet him at the curb
outside. He then stashed the toner in a garbage area so he could
retrieve it later.
By the time he was done, Gumbs had used his
fraudulent profits to rent a luxury apartment in suburban Westchester
County, make a $50,500 down payment on a BMW, and pay for shopping
sprees at Burberry, Fendi and Gucci stores. Bank and credit card records
showed deposits of $150,000, and purchases of airline tickets and hotel
rooms in Las Vegas; Cancun, Mexico; and Orlando, Fla.
Gumbs, 34, pleaded guilty last year and was
sentenced to 2 1/2 to 7 1/2 years behind bars. He also was ordered to
forfeit his BMW, Rolex, laptop computers, four Louis Vuitton bags and
other items bought with ill-gotten gains
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and WICU. All Rights Reserved.
