Legal News

The Great Wilson Sonsini Office-Supply Swindle?

By Ashby Jones

Even the most disgruntled third-year law-firm associate typically has great things to say about his or her law firm’s supply closet.

More post-it notes than would fit in a studio apartment, highlighters to match the most vibrant rainbow, an unlimited supply of pens that work well. File folders, redwells, staplers, rulers and scissors. Reams of letterhead paper, three-hole punchers, three-ring binders, bulletin boards, mouse pads, pencil sharpeners and desktop calendars — maybe even a choose-your-own Successories section. When conversation slowed at firm functions, we could always milk one or two minutes of fun out of talking about the supply closet. (Okay, maybe not two minutes.)

But out at Wilson Sonsini in Palo Alto, we’d imagine that mentions of office supplies don’t conjure a Charlie Bucket sense of magic and wonder, but of . . . criminal procurement fraud.

Seriously.

The news: According to a federal indictment filed in San Jose late last week, prosecutors have alleged that a purchasing specialist out at Wilson helped a San Francisco office supplier defraud the company of some $1 million through fake purchases of index tab dividers. That’s right. One million dollars worth of index tab dividers.

According to the indictment, John Masakazu Tashiro conspired with employees at a company called Attorneys Printing Supply from 2002 to 2006 to place dozens of purchase orders that were never filled. The APS employees allegedly billed Wilson Sonsini for the fictitious dividers and kicked some of the proceeds back to Tashiro. Click here for the indictment, here for the story, from the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

A spokeswoman for Wilson Sonsini last week told the Merc: “It’s an unfortunate situation. Given that it’s an ongoing case, I’m not in a position to comment on specifics.” Tashiro was not reached for comment.

According to the Merc, though prosecutors said the alleged scam was worth about $1 million, the numbers cited in the indictment suggest Tashiro’s share of the proceeds was relatively slim. He was cut several checks for between $1,000 and $1,500, according to the charges.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 08, 2009 (boomark / email).