Seattle woman pleads guilty to bribing a juror in Feeding Our Future trial

Ladan Mohamed Ali and her attorney leave the federal courthouse Thursday after she pleaded guilty to bribing a juror in the Feeding Our Future trial. Photo by Deena Winter/Minnesota Reformer

A Seattle woman pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to bribing a juror in the first Feeding Our Future trial earlier this year.

Ladan Mohamed Ali, 31, admitted she delivered a Hallmark gift bag to a juror’s house on June 2 with $120,000 and instructions on how to argue for an acquittal, along with a promise to bring more money if the juror voted to acquit all seven defendants in the first trial of the biggest pandemic relief fraud in the nation.

Ali cried as she acknowledged her role in the scheme, and as a federal prosecutor explained she would not be able to change her mind after pleading guilty.

Asked why she decided to plead guilty, she told U.S. District Judge David Doty, “From the very beginning I wanted to take responsibility for my actions.”

Ali agreed to deliver the bribe in exchange for $150,000 for herself, but worried her alleged co-conspirators wouldn’t deliver on their promise, so she hatched a plan to keep the bribe money, she admitted. Everything didn’t go to plan, however, and she instead ended up keeping $80,000 of $200,000 she was supposed to deliver.

Ali faces five or six years in prison, compared to the maximum of 15 years in prison, but will get a reduction in her sentence for quickly accepting responsibility. She will be sentenced by Doty after a pre-sentence investigation. She remains free until then.

Prosecutors say five defendants researched “juror No. 52” online, found her address and surveilled her, following her home from the federal courthouse during the trial and communicating via Signal, an encrypted messaging app.

Ali is one of five people charged with conspiracy to bribe the juror — three of whom were on trial for stealing $49 million from a federal program intended to feed hungry children in what’s become known as the Feeding Our Future scandal, named after the nonprofit at the center of the scheme. A fourth is the brother of two defendants. Two of the three were ultimately acquitted — despite the fact that the juror immediately reported the bribe to police and was dismissed from the juror — and now are being held in jail.

One other defendant, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, of Shakopee, pleaded guilty in July to his role in the bribe. Prosecutors have said Ali and Nur previously were in a relationship.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said after the hearing he expects more guilty pleas to come, now that two of the main players have pleaded guilty.

Ali said she flew to Minneapolis to carry out the scheme on May 30. Nur admitted in July he asked Ali to surveil and follow the juror home from the trial the next day, and gave Ali a photo of the juror’s car and a map to get to her parking ramp. Prosecutors have said she drove the rental car near the juror’s home 19 times the weekend before the bribe money was dropped off.

Thompson said Ali lied and told Nur on June 1 that she approached the juror in a bar, and the juror said she could be bribed for $500,000. Nur relayed that to another defendant, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, who said he would come up with the rest of the money.

Thompson said Ali never actually talked to the juror in a bar, and instead planned to keep all of the bribe money.

But her plan was foiled when Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, the younger brother of defendants Abdiaziz Shafii Farah and Said Shafii Farah, insisted in driving with Ali to the juror’s house to deliver the bribe.

When Thompson said in court that Farah drove with Ali to make sure she didn’t steal the money, Ali replied, “I didn’t know that was why” (at the time).

So she secreted away $80,000 of the $200,000, she admitted in court while standing beside Thompson and her attorney Eric Newmark.

Ali was seen in street surveillance videos following the juror — the youngest juror and only juror of color (Asian-American) — home from the courthouse on May 31, the day closing arguments began, one day after she flew from Seattle to Minneapolis and rented a hotel room and Volkswagen Taos.

Ali is connected to the defendants through Afro Produce LLC, a food vendor that received over $1.6 million from entities charged in the federal case, the indictment says.