Task Force Raids Alleged Boiler Rooms : * Investigation: Offices and homes linked to office-products firm are hit after complaints of high-pressure tactics.

COSTA MESA — A team of more than 100 investigators led by U.S. postal inspectors raided seven offices and two homes and seized a truckload of records belonging to a Costa Mesa supplier of office products.

No arrests have been made in the postal investigation, which was aided by the Orange County Boiler Room Task Force.

“We did quite a massive and thorough search,” Postal Inspector Donald Obritch said. “It was one of the largest I’ve seen in a long time.”

Internal Systems Corp. used telemarketers, primarily to sell toner for use in office copiers to small businesses around the country, Obritch said. Typically, the company’s mostly college-age salespeople would phone small companies and try to sell cases of toner at what they claimed were discount prices. Instead, Obritch said, companies complained of being pressured into buying toner at inflated prices, often more than five times the usual retail price.

Most of the invoices found during the search were for cases of toner sold for about $400 each, Obritch said, adding that the products normally cost $69. Before the simultaneous raids on Wednesday, the Postal Service had received complaints from customers who had paid a total of more than $1 million for toner and other products, he said.

“This is a real common scheme we’ve seen for some years now,” he said. “This one, though, was a very large-scale operation. It spread to just about every state.”

Obritch said, however, that the operation is not believed to be connected to other such sales groups.

With a task force that included the FBI, the Orange County district attorney’s office and local police, postal inspectors raided the homes of Internal Systems top officers, including Dennis and Diane Conway Connelly of Laguna Hills. Dennis Connelly, 30, is the company’s president and chief executive; Diane Connelly, 27, is the company’s secretary and chief financial officer.

The task force also raided the home of the firm’s general manager, Sharon Webb, 28, of Tustin.