OFFICE DEPOT MANAGER GOT RICH SELLING STOLEN INK CARTRIDGES

[Anonymous]

OFFICE DEPOT MANAGER GOT RICH SELLING STOLEN INK CARTRIDGES
King County Washington : prosecutors have charged an Office Depot manager and another man with running a stolen goods ring, in which they allegedly stole ink, toner and cameras from an Office Depot and sold them on eBay for thousands of dollars.Prosecutors said the Office Depot warehouse in Kent had lost more than $2.1 million in missing ink and toner supplies since 2007. But it wasn’t until the company installed security cameras last year that it solved the mystery.

According to a Kent Police affidavit, a camera caught Office Depot manager Dion Alexander taking ink cartridges several times from the warehouse and giving them to a man in a parked car. The man in the car was Kenneth Ngugi, who used to work at Office Depot, police said. His supervisor was Alexander.

Ngugi told a detective that he and his former boss had made at least $500,000 selling stolen Office Depot printer supplies since 2006, according to the affidavit. He reportedly said he would order specific items, pick them up from Alexander, and sell them on eBay.

When Ngugi, 31, was arrested on April 9, 2010, he had $6,750 of stolen Office Depot goods in his car, police said. When Alexander, 35, was arrested the same day, he had 10 "crisp" hundred dollar bills that Ngugi had allegedly given him, according to the affidavit.Police said Ngugi’s PayPal account had received more than $1 million over the years, and that there had been numerous sales of laptops, digital cameras and other electronics believed to have been stolen from Office Depot.

Much of the money came in recent years, through a handful of large transactions. One customer, a company called Microdata, paid Ngugi $600,000 for ink and toner supplies over the course of three years, police said.Alexander received a total of $176,000 from the account.Prosecutors charged Alexander and Ngugi each with seven counts of trafficking in stolen goods.

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June 14, 2011 at 9:37 AM