SAN JOSE — A former member of a high-end executive security outfit that protected Silicon Valley icons like Mark Zuckerberg has been sentenced to probation for his role in a pay-to-play gun-permit scandal that led to indictments of top officers in the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and eventually forced the departure of longtime sheriff Laurie Smith.
Martin Nielsen, who once helped run the firm AS Solution, was sentenced for misdemeanor crimes related to a hefty donation agreement with sheriff’s brass to secure concealed-carry weapons permits for their security agents. He was prosecutors’ chief witness in securing the the bombshell August 2020 bribery-related indictments of Sheriff’s Capt. James Jensen, local gun-maker Michael Nichols, and two South Bay attorneys.
Jensen was convicted by a jury last month of felony conspiracy and bribery charges based on allegations he served as a key broker between the AS Solution figures and the sheriff’s office. Nichols pleaded guilty last year to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to solicit a bribe.
At a Tuesday morning hearing in which Nielsen and his attorney appeared via video feed, Judge Eric Geffon sentenced Nielsen to one day in jail, which has already been served, one year of probation and $645 in fines and court fees.
Nielsen’s sentence was recommended by Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney John Chase, who runs the office’s Public Integrity Unit and is the lead prosecutor for the criminal indictments related to the CCW scandal. Chase lauded Nielsen’s cooperation over the past four years and his testimony that led to Jensen’s conviction, and said Nielsen provided the foundation of a probe that resulted in “a new chapter in the sheriff’s office in the county.”
“He was extremely honest in his testimony,” Chase told Geffon in court Tuesday. “None of this may have happened without his cooperation.”
Nielsen’s attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, said his client has “really paid a significant price” for his crimes and supported Chase’s recommendation.
Nielsen, a former executive security manager at AS Solution, was the first subject of the DA’s corruption probe to cooperate with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty in 2020 to three misdemeanor counts: conspiracy to solicit the acceptance of a bribe, conspiracy to file concealed-carry weapon license applications with false statements, and making a campaign contribution in a false name.
Jack Stromgren, another AS manager, pleaded guilty around the same time as Nielsen to a misdemeanor count of conspiracy to file CCW license applications with false statements. Christian West, the security firm’s former CEO, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges, and his charges were reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for his cooperation.
Both Stromgren and West are still awaiting sentencing, with their next court hearing scheduled for Oct. 29.
Two local attorneys accused of helping connect the parties and direct the illicit political donation beat the indictment charges. Christopher Schumb successfully argued a conflict of interest by District Attorney Jeff Rosen, for whom he did fundraising. After his argument was upheld by an appellate court, his charges were dismissed. Harpaul Nahal was acquitted at the same trial that ended with Jensen’s conviction.
According to prosecutors, Nielsen, West and Stromgren conspired with the defendants in the indictment to obtain up to a dozen CCW permits from the sheriff’s office in exchange for $90,000 in donations to groups that supported then-sheriff Laurie Smith’s 2018 re-election.
West and Nielsen were connected to Schumb by Nichols, a friend of Nielsen’s, and Nahal, an attorney who knew Schumb and his connections to the sheriff. Schumb co-managed finances for the Santa Clara County Public Safety Alliance, an independent expenditure committee that backed Smith.
West and Nielsen testified that through that group, they were connected to Jensen, a close adviser to Smith who oversaw CCW permit applications for VIP-type recipients. An initial $45,000 donation was made to the PSA and eventually captured the attention of the DA’s office after the Metro Silicon Valley newspaper alerted prosecutors to the unusually large contribution. Before Nielsen could make the second donation, he was stopped and searched by DA investigators and began cooperating with the office.
DA investigators compelled Nielsen, under their guidance, to secretly record a meeting with Jensen and reportedly captured references to a “quid pro quo” and Jensen directing Nielsen to quietly give the second $45,000 to the nonprofit Sheriff’s Advisory Board. West admitted to consulting with Nielsen and approving the donations.
Stromgren admitted to instructing his agents on the Facebook security team to fill out their applications with fraudulent Santa Clara County addresses to mask the fact they lived out of the county and were therefore ineligible for the special gun permits from the sheriff’s office.
Prosecution of a second set of indictments that sprang from the DA corruption investigation is still underway. Jensen and former undersheriff Rick Sung are accused of arranging a proposed donation of iPads to the sheriff’s office with Apple security executive Thomas Moyer to expedite CCW permits for a group of Apple security employees.
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Moyer initially convinced a trial court judge to dismiss his bribery charged based on insufficient evidence, but an appellate court last year overturned that decision and reinstated the charge.
Sung is also charged with another bribery allegation in which prosecutors say he leveraged the renewal of a CCW permit to compel businessman Harpreet Chadha to donate a San Jose Sharks luxury suite for Smith’s use for a re-election celebration in February 2019. Chadha has asserted in court that the donation was part of a routine practice to ensure the expensive suite did not go unused for less-popular game days.
Smith, the former six-term sheriff, was never criminally charged. But the indictments ended up serving as a blueprint for a 2022 civil grand jury trial in which she was found guilty of many of the same allegations in the criminal investigation. The civil outcome formally removed her from office, which was symbolic since she had already announced her retirement and even resigned mid-trial in an attempt to head off a verdict.
The opportunities for the kind of political favoritism and favor-trading that tainted the sheriff’s office are now significantly diminished after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as the Bruen decision outlawed the “good cause” requirements for CCW permits that gave sheriffs and police chiefs wide latitude in who got the coveted gun licenses.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
