Guns for iPads? Apple Security Chief embroiled in a concealed carry scandal
Say what you will about the state of the Apple union, but when a company's devices have become currency, you know it might just have made it. We know about plenty of stories about iPhone scams and iPhone scalpers, even iPhone carjackers, but bribing police officers with iPads?
That must immediately raise the street cred of Apple's venerable tablets, even though the WSJ story is more complicated than it sounds. Jeffrey Rosen the Bay Area DA, apparently is out to get the local Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office which has reportedly been involved in quid pro quo transactions with bribes masked as donations in order to approve concealed carry permits.
This time around, however, it has been none other than Apple's Head of Security Thomas Moyer who may have fell victim of the permit racket. According to Jeffrey Rosen he pledged two hundred iPads as a donation to the Sheriff’s Office in exchange for concealed carry licenses for his employees: Mr Moyer, he claims "agreed to donate close to $70,000 worth of iPads. The donation was pulled back at the eleventh hour when our search warrants into this probe began."
Usually, a concealed carry permit is given to anyone who applies in places where concealed carry is allowed, provided they are not in a database that says otherwise. In California, however, the local law enforcement authorities have the final say who will get or won't get a permit even if they are not in the banned person database. This might have prompted Apple's security chief to try and speed up the process, "nudged" by two local officers, Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen, into a donation scheme.
Needless to say, the attorneys of both Mr Moyer and Mr Sung, deny any wrongdoing, and allege that the fraud allegations are part of the District Attorney's grander feud with the Sheriff's Office. Apple, in its turn, issued the following statement on the alleged concealed carry permit bribing scheme:
We expect all of our employees to conduct themselves with integrity. After learning of the allegations, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing.
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