Feds charge 5 with attempting to bribe Minnesota juror with $120K
MINNEAPOLIS– Five people were charged Wednesday with conspiring to bribe a Minnesota juror with a bag of $120,000 cash in exchange for the suspects’ acquittal. one of the largest in the country COVID-19-related fraud cases were announced by the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI on Wednesday.
Unsealed court documents reveal an extravagant scheme in which the suspect researched the juror’s personal information on social media, surveilled her, tracked her daily habits and purchased a GPS device to install on her car. Authorities believe the defendants targeted the woman, known as “Juror 52,” because she was the youngest and they believed she was the only person of color on the panel.
The juror reported the attempted bribery and was removed from the case before deliberations began.
The attempted bribery brought renewed attention to the trial of seven suspects from Minnesota accused of coordinating to steal more than $40 million from a federal program meant to feed children during the coronavirus pandemic. More than $250 million in federal funds overall were taken in the scheme and only about $50 million has been recovered, authorities say.
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali are each charged with one count of conspiracy to bribe a juror, one count of bribing a juror and one count of corruptly influencing a juror.
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah is also charged with obstruction of justice.
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah and Abdimajid Mohamed Nur were among five convicted in the fraud trial earlier this month, while Said Shafii Farah was acquitted. Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali were not involved.
Investigators spent three weeks sifting through mountains of evidence to unravel the plot, which U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger described as “something out of a mafia movie.”
The five defendants sought an acquittal not on the evidence but “through an elaborate scheme to infiltrate this jury,” he said.
According to the indictment, the plan hatched in mid-May. Ali, who is accused of delivering the bribe money to the judges’ houseflew from Seattle to Minneapolis on May 17 to meet with Nur and allegedly agreed to deliver the bribe to the home of “Juror #52” in exchange for $150,000.
She returned to Minneapolis two weeks later, on May 30, and a day later she attempted to follow the woman home as she exited a parking ramp at the courthouse.
On June 2, Abdiaziz Farah instructed Nur to meet at Said Farah’s company to collect the bribe money, the indictment said. When Nur arrived at the company, Said Farah gave him a cardboard box containing the money and told Nur to ‘be safe’. Nur gave the money to Ali after picking her up from a parking lot later in the day. Hours later, Ali and Abdulkarim Farah drove to a Target store and bought a screwdriver, which they used to remove the license plates from Ali’s rental car before driving to the juror’s home.
While Farah remained in the car and filmed the encounter, Ali knocked on the door and was greeted by a relative of the juror. Ali gave her the gift bag and explained that there would be more money if the juror voted to acquit.
According to court documents, the group came up with a “blueprint” of arguments for the juror to help convince other jurors to acquit, injecting the idea that prosecutors were motivated by racial animus: “(w)e are immigrants, they don’t. respect us,” the list of proposed arguments read.
The juror called police after she got home and gave them the bag, according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit noted that the woman who left the bag knew the juror’s first name. The names of the jurors have not been made public, but the list of people with access to them includes prosecutors, defense attorneys and the seven defendants.
On June 3, after the bribery attempt was reported, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered all seven suspects to surrender their phones. Abdiaziz Farah performed a factory reset of his iPhone to delete all messages and photos detailing the plot, court records show.
Two days later, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Abdiaziz Farah’s home and found a typewritten list of the jurors hidden in a plastic water bottle.
Abdiaziz Farah, Said Farah and Abdulkarim Farah made their first appearance in federal court on Wednesday afternoon. An attorney appointed to represent them at the hearing declined to comment afterward.
All three men requested representation before the Office of the Federal Defender, a request that prosecutors objected to, citing the defendants’ alleged access to money parked abroad. Abdiaziz Farah sent millions in stolen money to Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa, prosecutors said. That money was used to buy and build a 12-storey apartment complex in Nairobi, she added.
Judge Douglas L. Micko temporarily granted the defendants their requested representation and scheduled an arraignment and detention hearing for July 1. Prosecutors said Ali would make his first court appearance on Thursday.
Seventy people have been charged in federal court for their alleged roles in the pandemic fraud scheme that prosecutors say targeted a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. In addition to the five convictions at the beginning of June, eighteen other suspects have already pleaded guilty. For the others, processes are still underway.
Federal prosecutors call it a conspiracy abused rules that were laxly kept so that the economy would not crash during the pandemic. The FBI began investigating it in the spring of 2021. The defendants allegedly raised invoices for meals never served, ran shell companies, laundered money, indulged in passport fraud and accepted bribes.
The money came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was administered by the state, which channeled the money through partners like Feeding Our Future. The Minnesota Legislature watchdog arm found that the state education department did not provide adequate oversight of the federal program, which opened the door for the theft.