Apple exec allegedly offered Bay Area cop iPads for gun permits

The team charged with protecting Apple’s top brass didn’t used to carry firearms. But when CEO Tim Cook started getting serious threats in 2016, staff decided his security team should get guns and thus concealed carry permits.

Now, those permits — along with the 200 iPads a firm executive allegedly offered in exchange — are a fresh flashpoint in a yearslong bribery scandal.

On Friday, a tribunal of judges in California’s 6th District Court of Appeal reinstated a bribery charge for Thomas Moyer, Apple’s head of global security. Prosecutors say he illegally offered to give more than $50,000 worth of iPads to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office in exchange for a batch of concealed carry weapon permits for Apple’s executive security team.

Moyer’s charge, originally given by a grand jury in 2020, had been dismissed by a lower court in 2021. But prosecutors appealed and won out: Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, in a Monday statement to SFGATE, said, “Moyer is right back where he should be — on the trial calendar and charged with bribery.”

The Friday ruling to reinstate the charge comes after years of litigation over concealed carry permits in Santa Clara. In 2022, a special jury found former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith guilty in a civil suit, determining she had abused her power to grant concealed carry permits, giving them in exchange for campaign donations. The grand jury that charged Moyer also charged the sheriff’s office’s undersheriff, Rick Sung, and captain, James Jensen, with requesting bribes.

Moyer’s involvement, the Friday ruling says, began after Apple’s executive protection team “became concerned about its ability to respond” to “more serious” threats made against Cook. They filed for the permits in 2018, but the paperwork appeared to make little progress, even as Moyer donated to Smith’s reelection campaign; Sung delayed the permit’s processing and complained that members of Apple’s team had supported Smith’s opponent, the ruling says. It wasn’t until January 2019 that Smith signed the licenses, the ruling says, but the applicants still didn’t get a chance to pick them up. 

Instead, Moyer, Sung and Jensen met at Apple Park in Cupertino that February, the ruling says. Details are sparse, but the ruling says that Moyer sent himself an email during the meeting with the subject line, “IPad Donation.”

Over the ensuing months, the ruling says, Moyer organized the iPad donation within Apple while hiding the fact that the weapon licenses were still pending. Sung told a sheriff’s office colleague to “think bigger,” the ruling says, and pushed the ask from 50 to 200 iPads, worth somewhere from $50,000 to $80,000. Moyer was amenable and stayed in contact with the office, the ruling says, and Apple’s executive protection team finally got their licenses in late March 2019.

That August, Moyer canceled the donation after speaking with a company attorney, the ruling says. But prosecutors were already looking into the office’s distribution of concealed carry permits, and the grand jury indicted Moyer, Sung and Jensen that November.

Litigation since has hinged on the definition of the word “bribe,” as well as whether Moyer had “corrupt intent” in offering the iPad donation. The appeals court, in Friday’s ruling, wrote that the evidence was there: Apple’s applications had been “languishing for months,” the judges wrote, giving the grand jury “ample ground” to think that Moyer would feel the need to bribe the sheriff’s office. With the charge reinstated, Moyer could petition the California Supreme Court for review or let the case carry on to trial.

“We strongly believe the Court of Appeal reached the wrong conclusion,” one of Moyer’s lawyers, Ed Swanson, said in a statement to SFGATE. “Tom Moyer did not commit a crime, and we will continue fighting this case until he is exonerated.”

Apple, which has employed Moyer since 2006, according to his LinkedIn, did not respond to a request for comment.

Hear of anything happening at Apple or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.