Leland Yee

Leland Yee Full Name: Leland Yin Yee Origin: Toisan, Guangdong, China Occupation: Member of the California State Senate from the 8th district (2006 - 2014) Crimes: Bribery Arms trafficking Racketeering Money laundering Type of Villain: Corrupt Politician

Leland Yin Yee (born November 20, 1948) is an American former politician who served as a member of the California State Senate for District 8, which covered parts of San Francisco and the Peninsula. In 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to felony racketeering charges for money laundering, public corruption, gun trafficking, and bribery.

Biography

Leland Yee immigrated to San Francisco, California from his birthplace of Taishan, Guangdong, China, when he was three years old and later became a naturalized American citizen. His father served in the United States Army and the United States Merchant Marine.

Yee attended middle school in San Francisco, at what is now Martin Luther King, Jr., Academic Middle School. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree at San Francisco State University before earning his PhD in child psychology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1975.

Prior to becoming state senator, Yee was a California State Assemblyman, Supervisor of San Francisco's Sunset District, and was a member and President of the San Francisco School Board. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore, making him the second highest ranking Democrat of the California State Assembly.

Yee was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on March 26, 2014 on charges related to public corruption and gun trafficking — specifically, buying automatic firearms and shoulder-launched missiles from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamist extremist group located in the southern Philippines and attempting to re-sell those weapons to an undercover FBI agent, as well as accepting a $10,000 bribe from an undercover agent in exchange for placing a call to the California Department of Public Health regarding a contract at the organization.

In response to the gun running and other criminal charges against him, the California State Senate suspended Yee as a Senator on March 28, 2014. On July 1, 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to a felony racketeering count in relation to money laundering, public corruption and bribery in a San Francisco Chinatown organized crime case. On February 24, 2016, Yee was sentenced to five years in federal prison, and was released on June 26, 2020.