Diana E. Murphy federal courthouse is shown in Minneapolis Friday, May 17, 2024.
BY: DEENA WINTER
MINNEAPOLIS (Minnesota Reformer) – A juror in the Feeding Our Future case was excused Monday morning after prosecutors said an unidentified individual went to the juror’s house on Sunday night and offered a bag containing $120,000 in cash and another bag if she voted for acquittal.
The bribery allegation comes during closing arguments and right before the jury was to begin deliberations on the guilt of seven defendants accused of fraudulently getting reimbursed $49 million in federal funds by vastly inflating the number of meals served to children at 50 locations across Minnesota during the pandemic. Prosecutors say they used the reimbursement money to buy luxury cars, houses, jewelry and property overseas — and very little food.
With the juror out of the courtroom, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said in open court that a woman in a Mazda drove to the juror’s home in Spring Lake Park, left a bag of cash with her father-in-law and said “there’ll be another bag tomorrow” if she voted to acquit the seven defendants.
Thompson said the juror wasn’t home at the time the money was left with her father-in-law. She called 911 and the money was left at her home until the FBI could retrieve it Monday.
“This is outrageous behavior,” Thompson said in court. “This is stuff that happens in mob movies.”
Thompson asked that the 12 jurors and six alternates be sequestered for the remainder of the trial, and suggested defendants be held until a verdict.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered the defendants to put their cell phones in airplane mode until the prosecution could get a search warrant to have them confiscated and searched. Another magistrate judge would likely decide on that.
The defendants were ordered not to leave the courthouse Monday, and Brasel questioned each juror individually about whether they’d been contacted or questioned by anyone about the case during the trial, including over the weekend. None of the others were, they said.
Even the defense attorneys were frazzled by the stunning turn of events.
“It’s a troubling and upsetting accusation,” defense attorney Andrew Birrell said in court.
The defendants — Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin and Hayat Mohmed Nur — are the first to go on trial out of 70 people charged in the massive federal case so far. Federal prosecutors have said it was the nation’s largest pandemic relief fraud, in which $250 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture funding was misused.
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