The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Wednesday charged five people, including a defendant acquitted in the recent Feeding Our Future food-aid trial, with attempting to bribe a juror serving on that case.
Seven people were on trial in the Feeding Our Future case. Three of them, along with a man and a woman not tied to the case, are charged with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror, and corruptly influencing a juror. They are Abdiaziz Farah, Abdimajid Nur, Said Farah, Abdulkarim Farah, and Ladan Ali. Prosecutors also charged Abdiaziz with obstruction of justice.
“These defendants engaged in a chilling attack on our justice system,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger told reporters Wednesday morning while announcing the charges. “They sought to buy a juror and use her to infiltrate the jury with their own false arguments that had nothing to do with the evidence or the law. They studied her, followed her and determined that she would succumb to their scheme. The fact that they failed does not lessen the magnitude of what they tried to do.”
Jurors convicted Abdiaziz and Abdimajid earlier this month of several charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and several other charges. Jurors acquitted Said of all nine charges against him.
The attempted bribery rocked the end of a six-week trial where jurors convicted five of the seven defendants of various charges for stealing $41 million of federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A week before the verdict, a woman showed up at the Spring Lake Park home of a juror and left a bag of $120,000 in cash, according to federal prosecutors. The woman allegedly told the juror’s father-in-law that another bag of money would be waiting for her if she voted not guilty in jury deliberations.
The juror, a 23-year-old woman, immediately reported the bribery attempt to the local police, who in turn went to the FBI.
Calls to attorneys who represented Abdiaziz, Abdimajid and Said during the first Feeding Our Future trial were not returned Wednesday afternoon.
Abdiaziz, Abdulkarim and Said made their first court appearance Wednesday in St. Paul. Court documents identify Abdulkarim as the brother of Abdiaziz and Said.
Abdiaziz, Abdulkarim and Said all asked for a public defender. U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko granted their requests for now, despite objections from the prosecution.
When Said asked for a public defender, U.S. Assistant Attorney Joe Thompson said the request was “preposterous,” and told Micko that the defendants are accused of stealing millions of dollars, and that some have investments in real estate properties abroad.
“The government should not be paying for his lawyer,” Thompson said.
Micko said he’d appoint public defenders for the three defendants “for the purposes of the day,” and if Thompson’s arguments prove correct, the government can seek to recoup the money.
Abdiaziz, Abdulkarim and Said are all in federal custody and will have detention hearings and arraignments next week. Ladan’s first appearance is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Sophisticated plot
While announcing the charges, Luger unveiled a detailed narrative of the alleged bribery attempt involving surveillance of the juror using a car tracking device, among other details.
“The sophistication and intentionality of this plot cannot be overstated,” Luger told reporters.
It allegedly began with the defendants researching the juror, which included finding her address, combing through her social media posts and finding information about her family members. The two defendants not previously charged in the Feeding Our Future case were recruited to help influence the juror, Luger said.
The indictment said the defendants focused on this particular juror, identified as Juror 52, because she was young and appeared to be the only person of color on the jury.
Among those charged was Ladan Ali, who prosecutors allege is the woman who dropped the bag of cash off at the juror’s home on June 2. FBI agents connected the bag to Ladan by finding her fingerprints on it, Luger said. The indictment says Ladan agreed to deliver the bribe money in exchange for $150,000.
According to the charges, Abdiaziz Farah directed Abdimajid Nur to research the juror. Abdimajid then recruited Ladan to help deliver the bribe. Ladan, who lives in Seattle, flew to Minneapolis on May 17 to discuss the plan with Abdimajid, the charges allege. Ladan again flew from Seattle to Minneapolis on May 30 to carry out the bribery plan, according to the charges. She rented a car that day after arriving in Minneapolis. Ladan would drive by the juror’s home at least 10 times between May 31 and June 2, according to the charges.
Ladan allegedly tracked the juror, which included following her as she left the trial on May 31. On that afternoon, Ladan’s rental car was parked across the street from the Jerry Haaf Memorial Ramp in Minneapolis, where the juror parked. A surveillance video shows Ladan following the juror as she exits the parking garage, according to the charges. Luger said Ladan’s rental car was near the juror’s home 19 times.
The charges allege that Said Farah supplied the money for the bribe. Hours before the bribery attempt, prosecutors allege that Abdiaiziz, Abdimajid and Said met at Bushra Wholesalers’ office in Minneapolis. There, Said allegedly gave Abdimajid a cardboard box full of money and told Abdimajid to “be safe.”
On Sunday, June 2, Abdimajid met Ladan Ali in a parking lot in Bloomington, where she allegedly took the money and transferred it to a Hallmark gift bag. That same evening, Abdulkarim Farah, the other defendant charged with jury bribery who is not a Feeding Our Future defendant, allegedly purchased a screwdriver at Target. He then used the screwdriver to remove the license plates from Ladan’s rental car just before she delivered the bribe, the charges say.
“When you’re trying to track somebody and you don’t want law enforcement to know about it, you take off your license plates because there are something called license plate readers around,” Luger said. “Obviously, it didn’t work fully because we were able to track that car.”
‘Watch and delete’
Ladan allegedly made the bribery attempt that night around 8:50 p.m. As she dropped off the bag of money, Abdulkarim videorecorded her doing so. He then sent the video to Said with the message, “watch and delete,” the charges state.
The bribery attempt sent shockwaves through the trial the following Monday.
“This is outrageous behavior. This is the stuff that happens in mob movies,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said in trial that morning. “It really strikes at the heart of this case.”
Thompson argued that the developments made the defendants a flight risk and a danger to the community, even if he wasn’t sure who was responsible for the bribe.
“Let’s be honest, it wasn’t someone outside of this room,” Thompson said.
Thompson successfully moved to detain all seven defendants for the remainder of the trial and U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sequestered the jury. Brasel also excused the Spring Lake Park juror from deliberations, as well as another juror who learned of the bribery attempt from her family.
FBI agents immediately seized all seven defendants’ phones, and eventually raided multiple defendants’ homes in the following days while investigating the alleged bribery attempt.
The charges state that Ladan flew back out to Seattle on the day after the bribery attempt, and left behind packages that she ordered that were delivered to the hotel where she stayed. Among the packages was a LandAirSea model 54 GPS tracking device, according to the charges, which Luger said was meant to be used to track the juror.
In the ensuing investigation, FBI agents found a list of the jurors’ personal information in a water bottle in Abdiaziz’s home. They also found that the defendants deleted several messages and data from their phones before handing them over to authorities, Luger said. This included Abdiaziz allegedly wiping his phone by conducting a factory reset, Luger said.
‘You alone can end this case’
Among the deleted files from Abdimajid’s phone that FBI agents recovered is a document containing instructions to relay to the juror.
“Below are arguments to convince other jurors,” the document reads. “REMEMBER your vote will be NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS for all defendants.”
The arguments on the document included:
- “We are immigrants: they don’t respect and care about us.”
- “No one from [Minnesota Department of Education] is indicted.”
- “Prejudice against people of color. The Government kept attacking Somali witnesses and asking them if it’s true in the Somali culture to cheat, steal or lie which was very racist.”
- “Why why why is it always people of color and immigrants prosecuted for the fault of other people including Kara Lomen and even the Governor. Where is Kara Lomen? Where is MDE finance people who paid millions and millions of dollars.”
- “Defendants did a lot of work including millions in food and expenses so who the hell does all that to commit fraud.”
- “Sponsor was responsible for everything. They received millions and millions of dollars to oversee this but they didn’t and the largest sponsor and its staff members is not even indicted.”
The document ended: “Stand your ground and don’t change your mind even if anyone pushes you to vote different. NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS FOR ALL defendants. You alone can end this case. Always do your best to convince other jurors to vote NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS FOR ALL DEFENDANTS.”
Luger said the arguments alleging racism are “designed to sway a jury based on an argument that the lawyers could never make in open court.”
“It is the definition of improperly and deliberately corrupting the jury,” he said. “It is an obvious and blatant attempt to inflame the jury so that they disregard their duty to render justice based on the evidence.”
Luger also said that charges in this case will push his office, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to consider seeking anonymous and sequestered juries in the future to avoid a repeat of what happened in the Feeding Our Future trial.
