Federal prosecutors charge five people in Feeding our Future jury tampering plot
U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger announces jury bribery charges along with the Feeding Our Future prosecution team on Wednesday in Minneapolis.
Matt Sepic | MPR News
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Prosecutors Wednesday announced jury bribery charges against three of the defendants in the recent Feeding Our Future trial along with two other people.
MPR News correspondent Matt Sepic joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share what he heard at a news conference at the U.S Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Prosecutors today, announced jury bribery charges against three of the defendants in the recent Feeding our Future trial, along with two other people. Our reporter Matt Sepic just returned from a news conference at the US Attorney's office in Minneapolis, and he's with us live. Thanks for taking the time, Matt.
MATT SEPIC: Hi there, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Tell us about the alleged incident that led to these charges.
MATT SEPIC: Well, the underlying trial, as I have been reporting over the past few months, involves seven people connected to a small restaurant in Shakopee who were charged with stealing $47 million from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic as part of a much, much larger alleged quarter-billion dollar scam involving 70 defendants overall.
Just before the last three defense attorneys were set to give their closing arguments on Monday, June 3, Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson made a shocking revelation in court. He told Judge Nancy Brazel that a woman drove to a jurors home in a Minneapolis suburb the night before a Sunday night around 9 o'clock, dropped off a Hallmark gift bag with about $120,000 in cash and promised more money in exchange for an acquittal vote.
Now, the young woman, juror 52, as she's known to the public, was not home at the time, but the money was left with a relative. When the woman did get home, she called 911 immediately. Police investigated and then handed things over to the FBI.
Now, back in court, Brazel dismissed that 23-year-old woman and replaced her with an alternate juror. The judge also ordered all of the defendants jailed, and she seized their phones. The closing arguments resumed that Monday, and the following Friday, the jury returned guilty verdicts against five of the seven defendants and acquitted two of them.
CATHY WURZER: Now, who has been charged with trying to bribe this juror?
MATT SEPIC: Abdimajid Nur, Abdiaziz Farah, and his brother Saeed Farah, were all defendants in the trial, and now they are charged with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror, corruptly influencing a juror, and Abdiaziz Farah is also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly performing a factory reset on his phone just before handing it over to the FBI.
Ironically, Cathy, Saeed Farah was one of the two defendants who was acquitted in the underlying fraud case at trial. He is now charged with the jury bribery attempt. Now, there are also two other people named in the indictment that was unsealed today, Abdul Karim Shafi Farah, he's a brother of Abdimajid and Abdiaziz, and then also Ladan Mohamed Ali of Seattle.
US Attorney Andy Luger says the plot was sophisticated, and it centered around her.
ANDY LUGER: Laden Ali, was the woman who showed up at juror 52's home with the bribe money. Abdimajid Nur was a Feeding our Future trial defendant. He recruited Ladan Ali and what we describe as a blueprint for juror 52, an instruction manual on how to win an acquittal, was found on his phone.
MATT SEPIC: And this instruction manual, Cathy, the government provided a copy of it at the news conference today. It's quite a dense single-page of texts, but I'll quote from it briefly. It says, quote, "you alone can end this case." It also says that the prosecution of the seven Somali-American defendants was racist and that the government hasn't proven its case.
Juror 52, by the way, Cathy, was the only person on the jury who appeared to be a person of color. And Luger says that is part of the reason why she was targeted. She allegedly flew in from Seattle, Cathy, just to carry out this scheme. And once it became public, on the morning of June 3, she got on a plane and flew back earlier than she had planned.
The FBI went to her hotel room, and according to the indictment and documents filed in this case, they allegedly recovered a couple of Amazon packages that contained vehicle trackers. Luger says Ali drove to juror number 52's house on at least 10 occasions and followed her around town quite a bit. Surveillance video allegedly shows her in her rental car on Third Street in downtown Minneapolis, as juror 52 leaves a parking ramp near the courthouse.
CATHY WURZER: This is quite a story.
MATT SEPIC: Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: What will this mean for the other Feeding our Future cases?
MATT SEPIC: Well, there are quite a few. As I mentioned, Cathy, there are 70 defendants in all. 18 have pleaded guilty. There were the five who were convicted earlier this month at trial. That leaves 47 other defendants' cases. There are so many that they are being tried in groups.
The next case that had been set to go to trial was due to go before a jury in August. But because of the resources required for this jury tampering investigation, prosecutors have already requested a continuance or a delay in the start of that trial. And that's for two men who allegedly ran a fake meal distribution site on Lake Street in Minneapolis, as part, as I say, of this, of this much larger scam.
And just to add a few things that Luger mentioned, this is really the first time, as Minnesota US Attorney, that he has ever prosecuted a jury-tampering case. He says the last time in his career, that he ever came close to doing anything like this, was in his early days in the early 1990s, when he was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, trying to take down the five families in the mob. They had a lot of concerns then about jury bribery attempts.
I was doing a little bit of research anticipating that this case would be filed. And I contacted a former US Attorney who had worked in Alabama, and he was the last person, I found, or anybody with the Justice Department that I could find, that had prosecuted a jury-tampering case. This is very rare, Cathy. And Luger emphasized, repeatedly, at the news conference today, that this strikes at the very heart of the justice system and the jury system, which is a key pillar of democracy.
CATHY WURZER: Right, wow. Matt Sepic, thank you for the reporting.
MATT SEPIC: You're welcome.
CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to MPR's Matt Sepic.
MATT SEPIC: Hi there, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Tell us about the alleged incident that led to these charges.
MATT SEPIC: Well, the underlying trial, as I have been reporting over the past few months, involves seven people connected to a small restaurant in Shakopee who were charged with stealing $47 million from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic as part of a much, much larger alleged quarter-billion dollar scam involving 70 defendants overall.
Just before the last three defense attorneys were set to give their closing arguments on Monday, June 3, Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson made a shocking revelation in court. He told Judge Nancy Brazel that a woman drove to a jurors home in a Minneapolis suburb the night before a Sunday night around 9 o'clock, dropped off a Hallmark gift bag with about $120,000 in cash and promised more money in exchange for an acquittal vote.
Now, the young woman, juror 52, as she's known to the public, was not home at the time, but the money was left with a relative. When the woman did get home, she called 911 immediately. Police investigated and then handed things over to the FBI.
Now, back in court, Brazel dismissed that 23-year-old woman and replaced her with an alternate juror. The judge also ordered all of the defendants jailed, and she seized their phones. The closing arguments resumed that Monday, and the following Friday, the jury returned guilty verdicts against five of the seven defendants and acquitted two of them.
CATHY WURZER: Now, who has been charged with trying to bribe this juror?
MATT SEPIC: Abdimajid Nur, Abdiaziz Farah, and his brother Saeed Farah, were all defendants in the trial, and now they are charged with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror, corruptly influencing a juror, and Abdiaziz Farah is also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly performing a factory reset on his phone just before handing it over to the FBI.
Ironically, Cathy, Saeed Farah was one of the two defendants who was acquitted in the underlying fraud case at trial. He is now charged with the jury bribery attempt. Now, there are also two other people named in the indictment that was unsealed today, Abdul Karim Shafi Farah, he's a brother of Abdimajid and Abdiaziz, and then also Ladan Mohamed Ali of Seattle.
US Attorney Andy Luger says the plot was sophisticated, and it centered around her.
ANDY LUGER: Laden Ali, was the woman who showed up at juror 52's home with the bribe money. Abdimajid Nur was a Feeding our Future trial defendant. He recruited Ladan Ali and what we describe as a blueprint for juror 52, an instruction manual on how to win an acquittal, was found on his phone.
MATT SEPIC: And this instruction manual, Cathy, the government provided a copy of it at the news conference today. It's quite a dense single-page of texts, but I'll quote from it briefly. It says, quote, "you alone can end this case." It also says that the prosecution of the seven Somali-American defendants was racist and that the government hasn't proven its case.
Juror 52, by the way, Cathy, was the only person on the jury who appeared to be a person of color. And Luger says that is part of the reason why she was targeted. She allegedly flew in from Seattle, Cathy, just to carry out this scheme. And once it became public, on the morning of June 3, she got on a plane and flew back earlier than she had planned.
The FBI went to her hotel room, and according to the indictment and documents filed in this case, they allegedly recovered a couple of Amazon packages that contained vehicle trackers. Luger says Ali drove to juror number 52's house on at least 10 occasions and followed her around town quite a bit. Surveillance video allegedly shows her in her rental car on Third Street in downtown Minneapolis, as juror 52 leaves a parking ramp near the courthouse.
CATHY WURZER: This is quite a story.
MATT SEPIC: Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: What will this mean for the other Feeding our Future cases?
MATT SEPIC: Well, there are quite a few. As I mentioned, Cathy, there are 70 defendants in all. 18 have pleaded guilty. There were the five who were convicted earlier this month at trial. That leaves 47 other defendants' cases. There are so many that they are being tried in groups.
The next case that had been set to go to trial was due to go before a jury in August. But because of the resources required for this jury tampering investigation, prosecutors have already requested a continuance or a delay in the start of that trial. And that's for two men who allegedly ran a fake meal distribution site on Lake Street in Minneapolis, as part, as I say, of this, of this much larger scam.
And just to add a few things that Luger mentioned, this is really the first time, as Minnesota US Attorney, that he has ever prosecuted a jury-tampering case. He says the last time in his career, that he ever came close to doing anything like this, was in his early days in the early 1990s, when he was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, trying to take down the five families in the mob. They had a lot of concerns then about jury bribery attempts.
I was doing a little bit of research anticipating that this case would be filed. And I contacted a former US Attorney who had worked in Alabama, and he was the last person, I found, or anybody with the Justice Department that I could find, that had prosecuted a jury-tampering case. This is very rare, Cathy. And Luger emphasized, repeatedly, at the news conference today, that this strikes at the very heart of the justice system and the jury system, which is a key pillar of democracy.
CATHY WURZER: Right, wow. Matt Sepic, thank you for the reporting.
MATT SEPIC: You're welcome.
CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to MPR's Matt Sepic.
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