All seven defendants in Feeding Our Future fraud trial arrested after juror was bribed with $120K in cash

A federal judge ordered the arrest Monday evening of all seven defendants in the Feeding Our Future trial following allegations that a juror was bribed with a bag filled with $120,000 in cash.

“The fact that there are only seven defendants and only seven people other than their attorneys that have the information to get to a juror and bribe the juror doesn’t relieve me with the responsibility to protect the community,” ordered U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel.

A number of defendants, including Abdi Nur and Hayat Nur, wept as they were handcuffed by officers with the U.S. Marshals Service. Family members, friends and supporters embraced them in the courtroom before they were led away.

The development came several hours after a shocking revelation was made in court earlier that morning—a juror had been dismissed after a woman arrived at the juror’s home Sunday with $120,000 in exchange for an acquittal. The allegation shocked local law professors, who couldn’t recall a similar incident in Minnesota, and also led to the confiscation Monday of all seven defendants’ cell phones.

Brasel said in her ruling that the juror was “terrified,” and “remains at risk for retaliation.” She also expressed concern that “someone obviously has the addresses of the families of these jurors.”

A search warrant affidavit filed for the defendants’ phones  revealed that all seven defendants “have had access” to information identifying the juror.

“It is highly likely that someone with access to the juror’s personal information was conspiring with, at minimum, the woman who delivered the $120,000 bribe,” Wilmer wrote.

The bribe prompted U.S. Assistant Attorney Joe Thompson to request the defendants’ arrests. They were originally indicted and released on their own recognizance in the case. Brasel heard arguments late Monday from prosecutors and defense attorneys.

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.

Each defense team opposed the motion to detain, arguing that the evidence available couldn’t be directly traced to their clients.

“There’s no individual suspicion on any one defendant,” said Michael Brandt, an attorney for Hayat.

All of the defense teams condemned the jury tampering allegations.

“The claims about a juror being approached in this way are beyond shocking—they’re un-American,” said Andrew Birrell, who is representing Abdiaziz Farah. “They do strike at the heart of our system. It’s very troubling.”

Closing arguments, which began last Friday, wrapped up Monday, and jurors are now in deliberations.

More money was promised in bribe

The jury tampering allegations were disclosed in the morning outside of the presence of jurors.

Thompson told Brasel that a woman visited a juror’s house Sunday night and left a bag of cash with rolls of bills. Thompson identified the woman as Somali; the seven defendants on trial are East African.

“This is outrageous behavior. This is the stuff that happens in mob movies,” he said. “It really strikes at the heart of this case.”

Cell phones belonging to the seven defendants were confiscated by federal authorities Monday after a search warrant affidavit was granted in the afternoon.

According to the affidavit from FBI Special Agent Travis Wilmer, a Black woman, “possibly Somali, with an accent, wearing a long black dress” approached the juror’s home around 8:50 p.m. Sunday. The juror’s relative, whom Thompson identified in court as her father-in-law, answered the door.

The woman gave him a white gift bag, according to Wilmer’s affidavit, and said it was a present for the juror, using the juror’s first name. Thompson and the affidavit identified the juror as juror 52. Her name has not been publicly disclosed. It’s unclear how the woman learned the juror’s name.

“The woman told the relative to tell Juror #52 to say not guilty tomorrow and there would be more of that present tomorrow,” the affidavit reads. “After the woman left, the relative looked in the gift bag and saw it contained a substantial amount of cash.”

The cash consisted of rolls of $100, $50 and $20 bills. When the juror came home and was informed about the bag, she called 911, according to the affidavit. The juror spoke with the FBI, which now has the money, Monday morning.

Thompson said in court Monday that the juror was not home when the woman arrived at the Spring Lake Park address in the north metro.

Spring Lake Park police declined to answer questions about the incident when reached by phone and email Monday. In response to a voicemail left by Sahan Journal Monday, Diana Freedman, a communications staffer with the FBI field office in Minneapolis, texted: “I don’t have additional information to share at this time.”

Thompson said the bribe applied to “all defendants.”

The defendants are being tried on a total of 41 criminal charges, including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. They are accused of stealing a total of $41 million from a federal program designated to feed underserved children. The joint trial is part of a larger case where 70 defendants charged with stealing a total of $250 million from the Child Nutrition Program.

Defense attorneys also told Brasel they were troubled by the allegations.

The juror in question is a 23-year-old woman. She appeared to be the only person of color on the jury. She was not in court Monday morning. Brasel said she excused the juror.

Brasel interviewed the remaining jurors one-by-one Monday morning in front of the defendants, asking them whether there had been other unauthorized contact with anyone, including the media. The jurors said they had not been contacted by anyone.

Brasel told jurors that she would be “reluctantly” sequestering them during their deliberations, and apologized for the burden it would impose. Sequestration typically involves isolating jurors from all outside contact aside from court and security staff until they reach verdicts in the case. It can also include limiting or prohibiting the use of phones, the Internet and media, including TV, radio and other media.

Fully sequestered jurors are also housed at a hotel during deliberations and cannot return home until after they issue verdicts.

“You may wonder why this is necessary,” Brasel told the jurors. “It is necessary for you to stay away from information.”

Brasel provided her reasoning to the lawyers earlier in the day.

“I want to make sure our jurors feel safe and are able to determine in an unbiased manner going forward,” Brasel told attorneys earlier in the day.

She added that sequestering the jury is the most burdensome move a court can make, but that she felt she had no other choice in order to ensure a fair trial.

At the request of defense attorneys, Brasel said she would also frequently remind jurors not to view media reports about the trial and that she would instruct them to put their phones on emergency mode to avoid seeing breaking news about the case.

Earlier Monday morning, Brasel ordered the U.S. Marshals to provide added security in court, and asked that they collect but not inspect all of the defendants’ cell phones.

Brasel told the defendants shortly before a lunch break Monday that they could not leave the courthouse for the rest of the day, a departure from past practices that allowed them to leave the building during breaks.

Law profs say allegations are rare

Joe Daly, a Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor emeritus, said he was “shocked” when he heard about the allegations, and that they raise serious questions.

“When somebody tries to throw a wrench into the whole system, it’s concerning,” he said.

Daly said he has never heard of jury tampering during a trial, except in movies.

“Jury tampering goes to the heart of the idea of due process of law, fundamental fairness, the sense of what justice really is in our society,” Daly said. “If you can bribe a jury, what’s the use of having jury trials?”

If other jurors hear about the alleged bribe, it could cast a negative light on all of the defendants, Daly said, adding that Brasel will likely be careful not to reveal too much information about what happened in juror 52’s case.

Daly said he doesn’t think Brasel will declare a mistrial, especially since the trial is near its end. But if the defendants are convicted, he said, the defense could use the jury tampering as a basis for an appeal by arguing that a fair trial was impossible because of the news.

However, David Schultz, a professor who teaches state constitutional law at the University of Minnesota Law School and political science at Hamline University, said he thinks a mistrial is likely.

“How do you guarantee, even with good vetting, that the other jurors are being truthful and haven’t been approached?” he said.

Schultz said that this will also likely impact subsequent trials for other defendants in the case who are awaiting their own trials. The federal government will likely not want to proceed with more trials until the person who allegedly tried to bribe the juror is identified, he said.

“I think it clearly has a cascading effect,” Schultz said. “It’s almost like, now they’ve got a whole new criminal problem here.”

Daly and Schultz agreed that it’s troubling that someone was able to track down a juror when their name isn’t public.

“How did they do that? Is there a flaw in our system?” Daly said.

Defense, prosecution wrap up

The court proceedings continued as scheduled Monday after the judge and attorneys discussed the witness tampering. Three defense teams gave their closing arguments and prosecutors gave a final rebuttal.

Andrew Garvis, an attorney for defendant Abdiwahab Aftin, argued that prosecutors began the trial by stating that little if any food was bought with federal money, but emphasized that the trial proved that millions of dollars were spent on food. Garvis also attacked the credibility of former Feeding Our Future employee Hadith Ahmed, who testified for the government that he participated in the fraud. Hadith also testified that he was cooperating with authorities in hopes of getting a lower prison sentence after pleading guilty to his role in the fraud.

“Hadith Ahmed didn’t believe the sky was blue,” Garvis said. “He knows for a fact that the more people he implicates gets a better deal.”

Andrew Mohring, an attorney representing defendant Mukhtar Shariff, spent much of his closing argument saying that his client’s $250,000 check to former Feeding Our Future employee Ikram Mohamed was not a kickback in exchange for enrolling a food site into the federal food program.

Defendant Hayat Nur’s attorney, Nicole Kettwick, said in her closing arguments that Hayat is a small player in the case and didn’t get rich like her co-defendants. Prosecutors allege that Hayat embezzled $30,000 in federal food money.

“She was just a hard worker swept by the whirlwinds of guilt by associations,” Kettwick said.

The alleged fraud involved the Minnesota Department of Education distributing federal funds to sponsor organizations like Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care. The sponsor organizations then dispersed those funds to food vendors and food sites, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children.

Several organizations reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did—or simply never served any meals at all—in order to receive more federal funds, prosecutors say, and allegedly spent the money on cars, property, vacations and other items.

Thompson said in his rebuttal that there was abundant evidence against the defendants.

“The reality is you saw overwhelming evidence of the fraud scheme,” he said. “Thousands of pages of evidence. Fake invoices again and again and again.”

Who’s on trial?

The defendants on trial are facing a total of 41 charges, including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. They mostly worked for businesses that used Partners in Quality Care as a sponsor.

The defendants are:

• Abdiaziz Farah co-owned Empire Cuisine and Market. Federal prosecutors allege that the Shakopee-based deli and grocery store posed as a meals provider for several food sites, and defrauded the government out of $28 million. Abdiaziz allegedly pocketed more than $8 million for himself. He is also charged with lying on an application to renew his passport after federal agents seized his passport as part of their investigation.

• Mohamed Jama Ismail co-owned Empire Cuisine and Market. Mohamed is Abdiziz’s uncle. He is also owner of MZ Market LLC, which prosecutors allege was a shell company used to launder the stolen money. Mohamed allegedly pocketed $2.2 million. He previously pleaded guilty to passport fraud.

• Abdimajid Nur allegedly created a shell company, Nur Consulting, and laundered stolen money from Empire Cuisine and ThinkTechAct, other alleged shell companies. Abdimajid, who was 21 at the time of his indictment, allegedly pocketed $900,000.

• Hayat Nur allegedly submitted fake meal counts and invoices served at food sites. Court documents identify Hayat as Abdimajid’s sister. Hayat allegedly pocketed $30,000.

• Said Farah co-owned Bushra Wholesalers, which allegedly laundered money by claiming to be a food vendor that provided meals to food sites that then reportedly served children. Court documents identify Said as Abdiaziz’s brother. Said allegedly pocketed more than $1 million.

• Abdiwahab Aftin co-owned Bushra Wholesalers, and allegedly pocketed $435,000.

• Mukhtar Shariff served as CEO of Afrique Hospitality Group, and allegedly used the company to launder stolen money. He allegedly pocketed more than $1.3 million.

Correction: The story has been updated to reflect that the bag of cash is in FBI custody.

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