A California grand jury charged Apple’s head of Global Security, along with the Santa Clara County Undersheriff and others, with bribery on Monday.
The indictment is a result of a two-year investigation by the Santa Clary County District Attorney’s Office, which revealed that Undersheriff Rick Sung, aided by Captain James Jensen in one instance, refused to release issuances of concealed carry weapon (CCW) licenses until the applicants gave something of value.
According to the Santa Clara County DA’s Office,
The various fees required to obtain a CCW license generally total between $200 and $400. Under state law, it is a crime to carry a concealed firearm without a CCW license. Although state law requires that the applicant demonstrate “good cause” for the license, in addition to completing a firearms course and having good moral character, the sheriff has broad discretion in determining who should qualify.
In using his “broad discretion,” Sung allegedly refused issuances on several separate occasions until generous gifts were received in return as bribes.
In the case of the CCW license withheld from Harpreet Chadha, Sung managed to extract from Chadha a promise of $6,000 worth of luxury box seat tickets to a San Jose Sharks hockey game at the SAP Center on Valentine’s Day 2019.
In the case of Apple, four CCW licenses were withheld from Apple employees until a promise was extracted from Thomas Moyer, Apple’s Chief Security Officer. This promise consisted of Apple “donating” iPads to the Sheriff’s Office in return for the CCW licenses. The promised donation of 200 iPads worth close to $70,000 was apparently “scuttled at the eleventh hour just after August 2, 2019,” when Sung and Moyer learned of the search warrant that the DA’s Office executed at the Sheriff’s Office seizing all its CCW license records.
According to DA Jeff Rosen, Sung and Jensen “treated concealed firearms (CCW) licenses as commodities and found willing buyers. Bribe seekers should be reported to the District Attorney’s Office, not rewarded with compliance.”
