By Robert Salonga
Bay Area News Group
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Former Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung pleaded guilty Monday to two bribery-related charges connected to a scandal alleging he and the previous sheriff administration leveraged the issuance of concealed gun licenses to extract political and other favors from often wealthy and well-connected permit holders.
Sung, 54, is the highest-ranking sheriff’s official ever convicted by the county District Attorney’s 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 , who was found guilty of civil corruption charges in a separate and rare non-criminal trial.
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“Law enforcement in Santa Clara County must be equally determined to be incorruptible as it is determined to protect our community,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement Monday.
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 two years of probation. Deputy District Attorney John Chase also moved to dismiss a connected charge against defendant Harpreet Chadha.
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, or retroactive dismissal, of the charges.
Sung’s only remarks to Superior Court Judge Hanley Chew were “I do” when asked if he understood the pleas he was entering, and “Guilty” when Chew asked Sung to confirm his pleas.
In a written statement after the court hearing, Sung’s attorneys, Naomi Chung and Tamara Crepet, characterized the pleas as putting a needed end to a “politically motivated” case that sidestepped the fact that only Smith had the authority to issue CCW permits.
“This case was never about Mr. Sung lining his own pockets,” the statement said. “It concerned concealed-weapons permits, which under California law only the Sheriff, not the Undersheriff, has the authority to issue.”
One of the schemes for which Sung was convicted alleged he held up the renewal of a concealed-carry weapons permit for Chadha, until Chadha offered the sheriff’s office free access to his San Jose Sharks luxury box, which was used in February 2019 to host a celebration of Smith’s 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.
Chadha had long held the position that his donation of the box was part of a routine practice of allowing its use for vacant spots in the game schedule, and of generally supporting law enforcement and first responders. His attorney declined comment Monday.
Sung was also charged in a separate bribery indictment that alleged he, a sheriff’s captain and an Apple security executive brokered a large donation of iPads to the sheriff’s office in exchange for expediting the issuance of CCW permits for the tech company’s security agents. In April 2025 , the executive and sheriff’s captain were acquitted, and jurors deadlocked on Sung in favor of acquittal.
One of Sung’s guilty pleas Monday admitted his culpability in the iPad case.
“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,” his attorneys’ statement reads. “When he was offered a resolution that guaranteed no custody and ended in dismissal, he took it. His family had suffered enough.”
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 of the captain and three Smith supporters who facilitated key meetings.
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 the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling that outlawed “good cause” tests for the gun licenses.
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 — private security moguls who sought the coveted gun permits in exchange for a proposed $90,000 donation to support Smith’s 2018 re-election — cooperated with prosecutors and were convicted of misdemeanor crimes.
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