4 Held in Alleged Scheme to Sell Phony Xerox Toner

The Orange County district attorney’s office arrested four men Thursday in a raid on a boiler-room operation that allegedly sold phony Xerox machine toner and other office supplies.

One of those arrested, Jason Shane Webster of Santa Ana, is expected to be charged today in Municipal Court with commercial bribery for allegedly offering a Xerox Corp. employee more than $1,000 for a company customer list. He will be the first person charged under a new law that makes such activity a felony, authorities said.

“We bust a lot of boiler-room operations,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel B. McNerney. “This is interesting because this is the first case we’ve had under the statute allowing us to charge commercial bribery. The new section (of the penal code) gives us a chance to nip some of these operations in the bud, when they’re developing their customer base.

Under the new statute, which took effect Jan. 1, it is a felony to offer to pay another person to obtain confidential information from his employer.

Webster, 23, who managed Compu-Data Dynamics on Irvine Boulevard, is also accused of telemarketing fraud. The others arrested were Mark Mullen, 23, and Vern Willhite, 28, both of Tustin, and Tyrannus Howard, 23, of Santa Ana.

Mullen and Willhite were arrested on suspicion of telemarketing fraud, and Howard was arrested on an outstanding warrant. All four suspects were booked at the Orange County Jail. All but Howard are expected to be released on their own recognizance.

Authorities also said that they obtained a court order to disconnect Compu-Data’s phones, thus preventing further phone sales. They also said other arrests are possible.

The arrests, and the seizure of business records associated with sales operations, followed a monthlong investigation by district attorney’s investigators, the U.S. Postal Service and the Newport Beach Police Department.

McNerney said the suspects were selling off-brand products but were misleading potential customers into believing that they worked for Xerox and were selling the company’s supplies. They allegedly claimed that there had been a recent price increase but said that if the consumers purchased the products from them, they could guarantee a lower price.

The principal product that Compu-Data marketed was toner for photocopying machines, which sells for about $500 a box, McNerney said.

“A busy copy machine can go through a box of toner in a couple of weeks,” McNerney said. “Large and medium companies go through a lot of toner. And markup on it is incredible, so it is lucrative.”