Sheriff says gun permit fraud investigation turned over to state AG

LOS ANGELES —

Six months after his predecessor announced a criminal investigation into an alleged fraud scheme involving some of the deputies responsible for issuing concealed carry licenses, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna confirmed this week that he has turned the matter over to state prosecutors.

Two deputies were relieved of duty last year, and the sheriff ’s department raided a Monterey Park gun store as part of an investigation that officials said stemmed from the discovery of “irregularities” in the process for issuing licenses to carry concealed weapons, also known as CCW permits.

News of the investigation stirred controversy on the campaign trail, in part because then-sheriff Alex Villanueva put his often-criticized Public Corruption Unit in charge of handling the case. That move sparked concerns about the department investigating itself instead of referring the matter elsewhere.

“When I got here, we did turn it over to the state attorney general’s office,” Luna told The Times in an interview Monday at the Hall of Justice. “That had no business being in this building.”

A spokesperson for the California attorney general said the office was “aware of the matter,” but deferred comment to local authorities.

In a statement this week, Villanueva took issue with the suggestion that the sheriff ’s department should not handle the investigation directly.

“If Sheriff Luna claims that the Ccw/fraud investigation ‘had no business being in this building,’ then that only demonstrates that he himself has no business in the building,” Villanueva said.

Though the former sheriff said the investigation began in late 2021, the case didn’t become public until September, when the department issued a brief news release.

The statement said that detectives had served warrants at “multiple locations regarding weapon law violations” and that “evidence was seized involving individuals who appear to have been involved in a possible longterm scheme to defraud the citizens of Los Angeles County.”

The release included few details about the specific allegations, other than saying that Villanueva was “disappointed” at the alleged wrongdoing and that the investigation arose as the “result of irregularities discovered in the CCW application process.”

The release didn’t specify what those irregularities were — but, a few weeks later, the Los Angeles Times published an investigation into the department’s handling of concealed carry permits.

Though Villanueva had repeatedly boasted of his success in increasing the number of people allowed to carry guns in public,

The Times found that among the thousands who received such permits were dozens of Villanueva donors and others with special links to the thensheriff.