New Feeding Our Future charges: Prosecutors say 5 tried to bribe juror with $120K

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged five people with trying to bribe a juror with $120,000 cash in a Hallmark gift bag during the recent Feeding Our Future trial.

Comparing it a mobster movie, U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger called the alleged plan to bribe the person known as juror 52 “a chilling attack on our justice system” as he laid out details that included a mystery woman flying in from Seattle and juror names smuggled from the courthouse in a water bottle.

The group, Luger said, targeted juror 52 because they believed her to be the youngest juror as well as the only juror of color. “They studied her, followed her and determined that she would succumb,” he said, but “juror 52 could not be bought.”

The attempted bribe came to light publicly on June 3 near the end of the trial that saw five of seven defendants convicted.

Prosecutors said a woman had come to juror 52’s house the night before, given the cash to the juror’s father-in-law (the juror was not at home) and promised to deliver more money if the juror agreed to find the defendants not guilty.

The juror called 911 when she returned home and local police contacted the FBI, leading to the charges announced Wednesday.

Those charged include Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35, of Savage, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, of Shakopee, Said Shafii Farah, 42, of Minneapolis, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, 24, of Minneapolis, and Ladan Mohamed Ali, 31, of Seattle.

Three of those accused in the bribery scheme were also defendants in the earlier trial. Luger said Abdimajid Nur recruited Ali while Said Farah allegedly provided the bribe money and his brother Abdiaziz Farah organized the plan. Said Farah was acquitted in the earlier trial.

Abdiaziz, Said Farah and Abdulkarim Farah each made their initial appearances in a St. Paul federal courtroom Wednesday afternoon. Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko ordered that the brothers remain jailed until their next hearings on Monday.

Nur and Ali are expected to make their first court appearances later.

Tracking the juror by GPS

The trial tied to the alleged bribery attempt involved seven defendants connected to a small restaurant in Shakopee who were accused of stealing $47 million from two federal child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic by falsifying reimbursement requests.

Investigators said this was part of a much larger scheme to fleece taxpayers out of $250 million. A jury convicted five of the seven defendants. (Juror 52 was excused from the jury after disclosing the bribe attempt.)

As the five-week trial ground on, Luger said the attempted bribery scheme was pulled together to win acquittal for the defendants.

He said the alleged conspirators began backgrounding juror 52’s family members and conducting surveillance to learn the juror’s habits.

One of the conspirators followed juror 52 home as she left the courthouse during the trial and covertly installed a GPS tracker on juror 52’s car to track her movements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Hoping to corrupt the entire jury, the alleged conspirators pulled together an “instruction manual” of arguments for juror 52 to convince other jurors that included language arguing prosecutors were driven by racial hatred and prejudice against immigrants and people of color, Luger added.

On May 30, according Luger’s office, Ali flew from Seattle to Minneapolis to carry out the bribery scheme. On June 2, at about 8:50 p.m., Abdulkarim Farah and Ali drove to juror 52’s house to attempt the bribe — a bag filled with $120,000 in denominations of $100, $50 and $20 — while Abdulkarim Farah remained in the car and took video of Ali dropping off the bribe money.

Investigators later found Ali’s fingerprints on the bag, prosecutors said.

The indictment charges all five defendants with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror, and corruptly influencing a juror. Abdiaziz Farah was also charged with obstruction of justice.

The indictment also alleges defendants tried to erase evidence of the attempted bribe from their phones. That evidence, later recovered by authorities, included the video that Abdulkarim Farah allegedly took of Ali dropping off the money.

‘You have to go after it’

Luger said this is the first he knows of in Minnesota, and the last time he was concerned about it was when he was prosecuting mob cases in New York 30 years ago.

Kenyen Brown served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama and prosecuted a jury tampering case in Mobile in 2015. His office charged the employee of a defendant in a tax fraud case with reaching out to the wife of a prospective juror before and during jury selection. 

Brown says the man who talked to that potential juror didn’t realize how serious his actions were, but the FBI certainly took them seriously. 

“It just smacks of impropriety, but you have to go after it as a prosecutor with vigor because otherwise people will more often attack a judicial process in that way.” 

The defendant in Alabama wound up getting three years probation and a $3,000 fine. The allegations in the Feeding Our Future case, however, are far more egregious and the defendants here will face long sentences if convicted. 

Bribery of a juror carries up to 15 years in prison. The obstruction count Abdiaziz Farah faces has a maximum of 20 years.

Watch: Briefing on bribery charges tied to Feeding Our Future, via KARE 11:

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