Ex-Fried Frank staffer accused of stealing $376,000 worth of ink

Adrian Rodriguez had worked in the firm’s copying department for nearly a decade and is facing charges alleging that he ordered thousands of cartridges from the firm’s suppliers over a two-year period between October 2010 and December 2012 in order to resell them on the black market.

“It may surprise many New Yorkers to learn that there is a black market for office supplies,” said Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance in a press statement. “This defendant didn’t just take a box of Post-it notes out of the office supply closet - he is charged with making an illegal business out of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of copy-machine toner.”

According to a release from the district attorney’s office, whose investigation into the case is ongoing, the defendent is being charged with two counts of second-degree grand larceny for the alleged toner theft. Not-for-profit firm New York County Defender Services is understood to be representing Rodriguez.

The news comes days after another man was arrested in connection with a scheme to defraud US firm Mayer Brown. The firm’s former chief information officer David Tresch was arrested in Chicago last August for allegedly defrauding the firm out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a fake invoices scam (31 August 2012).