Former state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of racketeering, admitting he accepted bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as campaign contributors.
Also pleading guilty was Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president who served as a consultant and fundraiser for Yee, Jackson’s son, Brandon, and sports agent Marlon Sullivan.
Two dozen other defendants are awaiting trial, including Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a former gang leader in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He is accused of running an established Chinese-American community organization, the Ghee Kung Tong, as a racketeering enterprise that trafficked in drugs, weapons and stolen goods. Chow’s lawyers have vowed to fight the charges, which they say were manufactured by the FBI.
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His guilty plea marked the downfall of a veteran politician who spent 26 years in elected office and only last year was a candidate for California secretary of state. He suspended his statewide campaign after his arrest on March 26, 2014, but nevertheless finished third in the June primary, with more than 9 percent of the vote.
He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of San Francisco in 2011. Prosecutors said Yee was trying to pay off the debt from his mayoral campaign with the money he solicited from undercover agents.
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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.
But prosecutors said Yee, in meetings arranged by Keith Jackson, told an undercover FBI agent in meetings early last year that he could arrange to import firearms, including automatic rifles, from the Philippines in exchange for campaign contributions.
