California man sentenced to 4 years for printer toner price gouging

That POS tried to run that scheme at my office for years. Almost had a secretary bite on it

Do these people not price out supplies at all? Check amazon

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A 79-year-old toner salesman was sentenced to four years in prison for running a decades-long, multimillion-dollar scam that caused tens of thousands of small businesses and charities to pay hugely inflated prices for printer cartridges.

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So, a salesperson and the company agreed to terms and it's illegal?

Weird.

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Ooooo ooooo ooooooo…now do the military industrial complex.

And Congress

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Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.

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A 79-year-old toner salesman was sentenced to four years in prison for running a decades-long, multimillion-dollar scam that caused tens of thousands of small businesses and charities to pay hugely inflated prices for printer cartridges.


So, a salesperson and the company agreed to terms and it's illegal?

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from reading the article, it sounds like the salesperson in question pretended to be different supply companies that the victim companies already had contracts with, agreed to sell them toner at the "old" price, but then sent invoices for a "new" inflated price and threatened legal action against companies who complained. so no, I don't think any terms were legitimately agreed to.

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the telemarketers would pretend to be representatives of toner-supply companies many of the businesses already had contracts with. The telemarketers would then tell the victims that the price of toner had increased, but they could buy it at the previous, lower price, prosecutors said.

Believing they were dealing with their regular suppliers, the victims would sign order confirmation forms. IDC would then ship toner to victims along with highly inflated invoices. When the companies would complain, IDC would threaten legal action or to turn them over to collection agencies, prosecutors said. If IDC did agree to take the toner back, it would demand significant “restocking fees,” prosecutors said.

Authorities caught on to the scheme in one case when IDC sent inflated invoices to a southern California storage company that only used typewriters to do business, according to court documents.

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I dealt with this guy and his companies for years. He had an old school phone sales out that would call companies and act like that companies current toner supplier. Convo went something like this “ hello Ms Office manager, I see here that you should be about ready for a toner reorder. How many would you like in this order? 13? Ok, I’ll get them shipped out.” The toner would ship but instead of these toners costing the $30/ea or so they should cost, this guys company would charge $100,$200,$300 ea. If that company didn’t pay, they’d place them for collections. So, of course, buyers would complain to the BBB or Dunn and bradstreet but that was against the billing company not the sales company so it never raising flags.

There’s another company, tightly associated with this one, that did the same with religious supplies to churches.