Apple's Global Security Chief Indicted in Scheme to Trade iPads for Gun Permits, but Apple Says It's Found No Wrongdoing

Earlier this week, Apple's Chief Security Offier Thomas Moyer and others were charged in an expanding investigation involving the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office over exchanging bribes for concealed gun permits, reported the Morgan Hill Times.

apple park drone june 2018 2
According to the investigation, Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung held back four concealed carry weapons permits for Apple's security team unless the company agreed to donate 200 iPads worth $75,000 to the Sheriff's Office. Rather than reporting the bribe request, Moyer was apparently set to facilitate the tech donation until the last moment when an investigation into the situation was started.

Attorneys for Moyer and [insurance broker Harpreet Chadha] maintain their clients’ innocence, saying they were collateral damage in an ongoing political rivalry between [District Attorney Jeff] Rosen and Sheriff [Laurie] Smith.

“Tom Moyer is innocent of the charges filed against him,” his attorney Ed Swanson said. “He did nothing wrong and has acted with the highest integrity throughout his career. We have no doubt that he will be acquitted at trial.”

Facebook has also been linked to the bribery scheme, with officials at AS Solution, the company that provides executive protection for Facebook, pleading guilty.

For Apple's part, the company is standing by Moyer, providing a statement to Ars Technica indicating that it has investigated the situation and "found no wrongdoing."

“We expect all of our employees to conduct themselves with integrity," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. "After learning of the allegations, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing."

Moyer, Chadha, and the two officials from the Sheriff's Office are scheduled to be arraigned on January 11.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
apple watch ultra 2 new black

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Finally Coming After Two-Year Hiatus

Monday June 16, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve). The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
terminal macos tahoe

Apple's Terminal App Gets Colorful Redesign in macOS Tahoe

Monday June 16, 2025 4:12 am PDT by
Apple's Terminal app is getting a visual refresh in macOS Tahoe, and it's the first notable design update since the command-line tool debuted. The updated Terminal will support 24-bit color and Powerline fonts, according to Apple's State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25. The app will also adopt the new Liquid Glass aesthetic with redesigned themes that align with macOS 26's broader...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...

Top Rated Comments

vicviper789 Avatar
60 months ago
Why does Apple get to have armed security? I thought guns were bwad though ?
Score: 50 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Eso Avatar
60 months ago
California guns laws working as intended.
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
2010mini Avatar
60 months ago
Bribery for something you shouldn’t need a permit for. Right to bear arms..... not right to bear arms only if the government allows. Or if one bribes the government enough.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rooskibar03 Avatar
60 months ago
Ahh Leftist. Guns are bad for you, but not for us.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
centauratlas Avatar
60 months ago

The permit is not to bear arms. It’s to conceal arms.
California is not an open carry state so the only way to bear this type of arms is to concealed carry.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ouimetnick Avatar
60 months ago
Seems like Rick Sung is the bad guy here trying to extort $75k in iPads for folks wanting to exercise their 2nd amendment. Moyer shouldn’t have agreed to it though.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)