Former No. 2 in sheriff’s office takes plea deal in gun permit case

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer

Santa Clara County’s former undersheriff pleaded guilty today (Sept. 21) to trading gun permits for iPads and San Jose Sharks tickets.

Rick Sung will be sentenced to six months of probation and 400 hours of community service for two felony bribery charges, his attorneys said yesterday.

Sung’s case looked back to August 2017, when Apple was trying to get four gun permits from former Sheriff Laurie Smith for its executive security team to protect then-CEO Tim Cook.

Smith approved gun permits for campaign donors and high-profile individuals, like tech founders and athletes, while ignoring applications from people in real danger, a jury later found.

Apple made little progress in Smith’s office until 2019, when Chief Security Officer Thomas Moyer agreed to donate 200 iPads worth $70,000 to the sheriff’s office, prosecutors said.

Sung pushed the permits through after the donation.

But Apple canceled the donation after District Attorney Jeff Rosen issued a search warrant related to the gun permits.

Moyer’s lawyers argued the iPads were a gift, and that he wasn’t expecting anything in return.

Moyer and Sung went on trial in February 2025. A jury of 12 acquitted Moyer but couldn’t agree on a verdict for Sung.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office decided to try Sung again, and then negotiated a deal before a second trial.

“For Mr. Sung and his family, the retrial meant more years of legal fees, more public scrutiny, and more strain on his wife and children. When he was offered a resolution that guaranteed no custody and ended in dismissal, he took it. His family had suffered enough,” his attorneys  Naomi Chung and Tamara Crepet said in a statement yesterday.

Sung started with the sheriff’s office in 2002 and was promoted to undersheriff in 2018.

One of Smith’s top deputies, Capt. James Jensen, was convicted by a jury of felony bribery and was sentenced to 10 months in jail in December 2024.

Jensen had AS Solution, Inc., an international security company, donate as much as $90,000 to get gun permits. Executives from the company also pleaded guilty to bribery.

Smith was never charged with a crime. But the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury charged her with corruption in 2022 in a rare accusation filed against a public official.

Smith resigned in October 2022, days before she would’ve been removed from office. Sheriff Bob Jonsen has replaced her.