Calif. solon Yee pleads guilty to bribe charges, faces fed prison

SAN FRANCISCO — Former California State Senator Leland Yee pleaded guilty July 1 to a felony racketeering charge in an organized crime and public corruption case that brought down the once-popular legislator known for his support for Filipino war veterans, good government and gun control.

The 67-year-old Yee, who previously has pleaded not guilty to bribery, money laundering and other felony charges, was scheduled to go on trial in late July in the sweeping case that was centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

But the long-time public official changed his plea Wednesday, July 1 in San Francisco federal court and will likely serve time in prison, according to legal analysts.

Leland Yee

He could face a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to federal sentencing guidelines and the plea agreement obtained by NBC Bay Area.

Yee admitted to a long list of crimes, including wire fraud and quid pro quo favors in return for campaign contributions, from 2011 to March 2014, the plea deal showed.

Plea agreement

In his plea agreement, filed in federal court in San Francisco, Yee, said he had agreed to “conduct … the affairs of the campaign through a pattern of racketeering activity.” He said his transactions with the agents took place between October 2012 and March 2014 and netted him $34,600.

A plea agreement signed by Yee’s former consultant and fundraiser, Keith Jackson, who admitted to the same charge, called for a prison term of between six and 10 years. Jackson, 50, is a former San Francisco school board president.

Yee agreed to relinquish $33,466 that the government seized during its investigation. He will also lose his right to vote during any time he spends in prison or on supervised release, the federal equivalent of parole.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is scheduled to sentence Yee on Oct. 21.

Also pleading guilty Wednesday, to a separate racketeering charge, were Jackson’s son Brandon and sports agent Marlon Sullivan.

All four had been scheduled to go to trial Aug. 10 in the first of several trials stemming from a five-year undercover investigation that led to a wide-ranging corruption indictment by a federal grand jury. Two dozen defendants are awaiting trial, including Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a former gang leader in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Chow is accused of running an established Chinese American community organization, the Ghee Kung Tong, as a racketeering enterprise that allegedly trafficked in drugs, weapons and stolen goods. Chow’s lawyers have vowed to fight the charges, which they say were manufactured by the FBI.

Prosecutors bolstered their accusations against Chow’s organization Wednesday in the plea agreements signed by Brandon Jackson and Sullivan, who both pleaded guilty to taking part in a racketeering conspiracy with the Ghee Kung Tong.

While some members of the organization were “strictly involved … in legal functions,” both men said, others were involved in such activities as drug dealing, robbery, extortion, illegal gun possession and murder for hire.

Ghee Kung Tong

Yee was not accused of taking part in any crimes with Chow. But the former senator admitted accepting a $6,800 bribe from a purported campaign contributor to sponsor a Senate resolution honoring the Ghee Kung Tong, which one of Yee’s staffers presented at an event in March 2013.

Prosecutors said undercover agents encountered Yee through Keith Jackson, who was also an associate of Chow’s.

Yee, who remains free on bail, had no comment after leaving court Wednesday. Two defense lawyers spoke up, however, saying the FBI was at least partly responsible for their clients’ actions.

Yee’s guilty plea marked the end of the political career of a veteran politician who spent 26 years in elected office. After his arrest March 26, 2014, he suspended his campaign for secretary of state, but still finished third in the June primary, with more than 9 percent of the vote.

He, who ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco mayor in 2011, was suspended for the remainder of his legislative term, which ended in January.

Campaign money

Prosecutors said Yee was trying to pay off the debt from his mayoral campaign with the money he solicited from undercover agents.

A child psychologist by training, Yee won his first elective position in 1988 as a member of the San Francisco Board of Education and was the board’s president during the second of his two terms.

He then won election to the Board of Supervisors from the Sunset District in 1996 and left in the middle of his second term to run successfully for the Assembly. He won the first of his two Senate terms in 2006.

Yee’s record as a legislator included sponsorship of legislation banning the sale of violent video games to minors, a law that was later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also known as an advocate of open government and of gun control.

Ironically, one of the allegations he admitted Wednesday was agreeing to illegally import weapons, including automatic firearms, from the Philippines in a March 2014 meeting with Jackson, an undercover agent and another defendant, now-deceased Filipino American dentist Wilson Lim. The agent paid him $6,800 in cash, Yee said.

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