Federal officials are accusing a California state senator Leland Yee of conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud.
California state senator Leland Yee was arrested on Wednesday along with the former leader of a Chinese criminal organization for conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud.
Yee was charged with six counts of depriving the public of honest services and one count of conspiracy to traffic in guns without a license. Ironically, Yee is known as one of California’s strongest advocates for gun control.
As reported by The Daily News:
The allegations against Yee include a number of favors he requested in exchange for campaign donations, as well as performing “official acts” in exchange for donations to get himself out of a $70,000 debt incurred during a failed San Francisco mayoral bid, according to court documents.
Yee discussed helping the undercover FBI agent get weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder-fired automatic weapons and missiles, and showed the agent the entire process of how to get those weapons from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines into the United States, according to an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Emmanuel V. Pascua.
Huffington Post elaborated on the connection to organized crime, reporting:
The San Francisco investigation focused on Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, who federal authorities said is the leader of Chee Kung Tong, or CKT, a social organization involved in what an FBI affidavit calls “criminal enterprise.” FBI agents discovered during the investigation that Yee and his political consultant, Keith Jackson, 49, were involved with Chow and his associates at CKT, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
You can watch a clip on the arrest from ABC 7, below:
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