Former Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung pleaded guilty today to two felony bribery charges, the DA’s Office said.
Sung, who was second-in-command to former Sheriff Laurie Smith, was charged with participating in a scheme to leverage his Office’s rarely issued gun permits to get Apple computers and access to a luxury suite at the SAP Center, prosecutors noted.
“One of the counts concerns Sung’s role in the promise of 200 iPads from Apple to the Sheriff’s Office and the other count concerns the luxury suite and Sharks tickets to be donated to the former sheriff and her guests,” the DA’s Office said in a release. “The negotiated disposition—which was reached as Sung’s retrial was approaching after an earlier hung jury resulted in a mistrial—requires that the former undersheriff sign an official form permanently surrendering his California peace officer certification and complete 400 hours of community service.”
A bribery charge against Harpreet Chadha, who held the license to the luxury suite, was dismissed during the same court hearing, the DA’s Office said in the news release.
“The plea ends an eight-year-long series of DA-initiated criminal corruption cases that led to six convictions, including former Sheriff’s Captain James Jensen, and eventually forced Smith to resign in 2022, just before a civil grand jury removed her from office,” a spokesperson for the DA’s Office said.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen said this shows his office enforces the law “without fear or favor.”
“Law enforcement in Santa Clara County must be equally determined to be incorruptible as it is determined to protect our community,” he said.
The case began after the 2018 election, based on a tip that someone had made a large campaign contribution to an independent expenditure committee that had supported the former sheriff’s reelection that year. Several employees of AS Solution, Inc., an executive protection security company, were prosecuted, leading to serious consequences, including a jury verdict against Jensen for conspiring to make donations in return for “CCW” licenses to carry concealed weapons.
The investigation also led to indictments against Sung for bribery in connection with the issuing of CCW licenses to several executive protection security agents employed by Apple, Inc. and to Chadha, a local businessman.
Following the criminal grand jury’s indictments in these cases in 2020, the civil grand jury decided to pursue a removal action against Smith and issued an accusation against her.
The trial of former Sheriff Smith on the accusation, which was prosecuted by the San Francisco County District Attorney’s Office, resulted in a conviction and her removal from office after 24 years, the Santa Clara County DA’s Office noted, adding Smith resigned shortly before the verdict.
