2 Convicted of Running Boiler Room Operation : Crime: The typical scheme involved bribing employees to keep increasing the size of office-supply orders.

Two men who ran an office supply boiler room in Sherman Oaks have been convicted of 30 counts each of wire fraud and transportation of stolen securities in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tenn.

Peter R. Tripp, 42, and Richard Fonseca, 55, were found guilty by a jury Thursday of bilking the Greenville Publishing Co., publisher of the Greenville Sun in eastern Tennessee, out of $561,000. They face maximum sentences of 210 years--10 years for each of the 12 counts of transportation of stolen securities and five years for each of the 18 wire fraud counts--plus penalties of $250,000 per count and payment of restitution to Greenville Publishing.

Tripp and Fonseca will likely be sentenced in the next 60 days, said U.S. Postal Inspector Tom Dugan in Pasadena, who was part of the investigation. A third defendant, Laszlo Grabecz, 42, a native Hungarian, is a fugitive and is believed to be in Europe.

According to Dugan, Tripp and Grabecz owned and ran office supply boiler rooms for 10 years in the Los Angeles area until their arrest in April, 1989. They most recently operated under the name of Business Systems Exchange in Sherman Oaks.

Fonseca was Business Systems’ principal salesman. A fourth defendant, Fonseca’s son, Christopher, was dropped from the case.

Tripp and Grabecz have also been indicted on federal tax fraud and tax evasion charges and the trial is due to begin next month in Los Angeles.

Dugan said more than 100 office supply boiler rooms like Business Systems are currently operating in the Los Angeles area.

He said the typical scheme used by Tripp and Grabecz involved having sales people call companies and secure small orders for ballpoint pens, paper pads, staples and other office supplies. They would then send “gifts” of radios, microwave ovens, televisions and compact disc players to the employees who ordered the products.

The employees would then receive bribes of 10% of the invoices if they agreed to continue ordering increasingly larger quantities of the supplies at inflated prices. If the employees couldn’t find places to store the supplies, Business Systems would hold the inventory, leaving companies to pay for products that were never shipped.

Dugan said Greenville’s bookkeeper, Edith Malone, initially ordered $174 of office products in October, 1984. The monthly orders grew in size, finally reaching $77,373 during one month.

In 1986 Malone was convicted in U.S. District Court in Tennessee on 11 counts of transportation of stolen securities and was sentenced to five years in prison. She was a government witness in the trial against Tripp and Fonseca.

Dugan said he didn’t know how many companies had been duped in a manner similar to Greenville, but “hundreds would be an understatement.” He also didn’t have a precise figure for how much money Tripp, Grabecz and Fonseca made over the years, but said it was likely several million dollars.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jimmie Baxter in Knoxville said Tripp, a former rock musician, and Grabecz lived in million-dollar homes. Tripp drove a Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini, and Grabecz wore a $14,000 Piaget watch and “did all his shopping on Rodeo Drive,” Baxter said.

Tripp and Grabecz were indicted last month by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on 13 counts of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, tax evasion and filing false tax returns.

The indictment says the defendants diverted money from their boiler room scams into various “hidden” bank accounts, then failed to declare the money in the accounts as income on their personal and corporate tax returns. It alleges that Tripp and Grabecz evaded paying a total of about $300,000 in income taxes between 1984 and 1986, and understated the income of their businesses between 1985 and 1987 by more than $1.6 million.

The tax evasion trial is due to start Oct. 30, but it may be delayed to give prosecutors more time to prepare, said Phillip Hall, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. If convicted on the tax charges, Tripp and Grabecz face maximum sentences of 29 years and $850,000 in fines.

Shortly before his arrest last year, Tripp received attention after he survived the sinking of a charter yacht on a New Year’s Eve excursion to Copacabana, Brazil. Authorities said 56 people died in the accident.

Described as a “key” witness by Brazilian authorities, Tripp said he saw the ship’s booking agent give money to a police officer, who then allowed the yacht to proceed despite heavy winds and dangerous surf.