{"id":471043,"date":"2026-09-21T18:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471043\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T18:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:08:09","slug":"ex-santa-clara-county-undersheriff-pleads-guilty-to-bribery-in-watershed-gun-permit-scandal-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471043\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Santa Clara County undersheriff pleads guilty to bribery in watershed gun-permit scandal \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2013 Former Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung pleaded guilty to two bribery-related charges<\/a> connected to a scandal alleging he and the previous sheriff administration leveraged the issuance of concealed gun licenses<\/a> to extract political and other favors from often wealthy and well-connected permitholders.<\/p>\n

Sung is the highest-ranking sheriff\u2019s official ever convicted by the county District Attorney\u2019s Office, and the related dismissal of a co-defendant, also Monday, concludes six years of prosecution that resulted in several criminal convictions and the 2022 expulsion of previous longtime sheriff Laurie Smith<\/a>, who was found guilty of civil corruption charges in a separate and rare non-criminal trial.<\/p>\n

As a result of a plea agreement in which Sung admitted guilt to two separate felony bribery solicitation counts, Sung will surrender his state law enforcement license and serve 400 hours of community service, and be under two years or probation. The man charged alongside him, Harpreet Chadha, saw his connected charge dropped.<\/p>\n

Another part of the plea agreement includes the prosecution allowing Sung, once he completes his community service and probation terms, to petition to reduce the felonies to misdemeanors, and then seek expungement of the charges.<\/p>\n

Sung\u2019s only remarks to Superior Court Judge Hanley Chew were \u201cI do\u201d when asked if he understood the pleas he was entering, and \u201cGuilty\u201d when Chew asked Sung to confirm his pleas.<\/p>\n

One of the schemes for which Sung was convicted alleged he held up the renewal of a concealed-carry weapons permit for Chadha<\/a>, until Chadha offered the sheriff\u2019s free use of his San Jose Sharks luxury box, which was used in February 2019 to host a celebration of Smith\u2019s re-election to a sixth term the previous November. Smith was separately accused in civil court of obscuring the source of the luxury box tickets to avoid gift reporting requirements.<\/p>\n

Chadha had long held the position that his donation of the box was part of a routine practice<\/a> of allowing its use for vacant spots in the game schedule, and of generally supporting law enforcement and first responders.<\/p>\n

Sung was also charged in a separate bribery indictment that alleged he, a sheriff\u2019s captain and an Apple security executive brokered a large donation of iPads to the sheriff\u2019s office in exchange for expediting the issuance of CCW permits for the tech company\u2019s security agents. In April 2025, the executive and sheriff\u2019s captain were acquitted<\/a>, and jurors deadlocked on Sung in favor of acquittal.<\/p>\n

One of Sung\u2019s guilty pleas Monday admitted his culpability in the iPad case.<\/p>\n

The wider bribery and corruption case involved a series of investigations and charges that revolved around Smith and longtime accusations of political and other kinds of favor-trading in how her office issued CCW permits. The case became public with a 2020 criminal indictment<\/a> of the captain and three Smith supporters who facilitated key meetings.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors outlined a long-running ploy that brokered the coveted CCW permits in backroom deals while largely ignoring applications from ordinary citizens. The practice was buoyed by the wide discretion state law once gave to sheriffs and police chiefs, and which has since been curtailed by U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 Bruen ruling that outlawed \u201cgood cause\u201d tests<\/a> for the gun licenses.<\/p>\n

In the first and most prominent criminal indictment, the captain was convicted, one co-defendant pleaded to a lesser charge, one was able to get his charges dismissed, and another was acquitted. Three other co-conspirators \u2014 private security moguls who sought the coveted gun permits in exchange for a proposed $90,000 donation to support Smith\u2019s 2018 re-election \u2014 cooperated with prosecutors and were convicted of misdemeanor crimes.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 Former Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung pleaded guilty to two bribery-related charges connected to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[17802,185234,185233,48025,4164,73112,728,185232,88,90,89,198,30980,3489,185231],"class_list":["post-471043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bribery","tag-ccw","tag-concealed-gun","tag-conviction","tag-guilty","tag-laurie-smith","tag-plea","tag-rick-sung","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-scandal","tag-sheriffs-office","tag-undersheriff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}