A former Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson employee was accused Tuesday by the Manhattan district attorney's office of stealing more than $376,000 worth of copy machine ink from the firm over a two-year period.
"It may surprise many New Yorkers to learn that there is a black market for office supplies," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement announcing the indictment of onetime Fried Frank staffer, Adrian Rodriguez, on two counts of second-degree grand larceny.
According to the district attorney's office, whose investigation is continuing, Rodriguez, 39, used his position in Fried Frank's duplication department to routinely order more toner than the firm needed from two of its vendors. He then allegedly resold the toner for $10 a box for black ink and $15 per box for color ink.
Though Rodriguez worked at the firm for approximately a decade, his alleged crimes only came toward the end of his tenure there, between October 2010 and December 2012, according to the press release announcing the indictment.
Two Fried Frank spokeswomen did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday. Rodriguez's lawyer, identified by Reuters as Sharyn Henry of nonprofit law firm New York County Defender Services, also could not immediately be reached for comment.
The charges against Rodriguez come less than a week after federal prosecutors in Chicago announced a second indictment against former Mayer Brown chief information officer David Tresch, 51, in connection with his alleged role in bilking the firm out of nearly $5 million. As The Am Law Daily has previously reported, Tresch was arrested and hit with one count of mail fraud in August for allegedly defrauding Mayer Brown out of at least $850,000 through a series of phony invoices for work performed by what was at the time an unidentified vendor.
Tresch's alleged partner in crime was unmasked last Friday when the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago indicted both the former Mayer Brown CIO and Nicholas Demars of now-defunct contracting firm NS Mater on 10 counts of mail fraud each. According to the indictment, the two men pocketed a total of roughly $4.8 million via a scheme that began with Tresch receiving kickbacks for work NS Mater—which provided contract employees and technology to Mayer Brown—actually performed and continued with him processing sham invoices submitted by the vendor.
In a statement, a Mayer Brown spokesman would only say that the firm terminated Tresch last June following an internal investigation and referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, "with which we continue to cooperate." The scheme allegedly began in 2004 and lasted through last year.
Prosecutors are seeking to recover the $4,819,253 the two men allegedly stole, while also pressing for the forfeiture of their homes, Demars's condominium in Chicago and residence in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and more than $225,000 seized from Tresch along with a camping trailer, van, and luxury car.
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