Said Farah, a defendant in the first Feeding Our Future trial who was found not guilty in the underlying fraud case, pleaded guilty on Thursday to trying to bribe a juror.
On June 3, 2024, as closing arguments were underway in the trial of seven people accused of stealing more than $47 million from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel halted the proceedings and ordered FBI agents to seize the defendants’ phones after prosecutors revealed that someone connected to the defendants had delivered a Hallmark gift bag with $120,000 to a juror’s home and promised more cash in exchange for an acquittal.
After Brasel replaced the woman, who’s been identified publicly as Juror 52, defense attorneys concluded their closing arguments, and the jury ultimately convicted five of the defendants and acquitted two others, including Farah.
Later that month, federal prosecutors charged Farah and two other trial defendants, plus two other people not indicted in the fraud case, with hatching the ill-fated plot to bribe Juror 52.
On Thursday, Farah, 43, became the last of the five to plead guilty. Because Brasel presided over the trial, U.S. District Judge David Doty is overseeing the plea and sentencing hearings in the jury bribery case.
Flanked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Ebert and defense attorney Eric Olson, Farah admitted that he helped put together $200,000 in cash to deliver to Juror 52 after his co-defendant and younger brother Abdiaziz Farah called to inform him about the plan.
Ebert said that an unnamed Feeding Our Future employee charged in the broader fraud scheme, but not the jury bribery plot, helped Said Farah “gather cash from multiple different people” including a hawala money transfer business in south Minneapolis.
Ladan Ali, 32, admitted in September that she flew from her home in Seattle to the Twin Cities to deliver the cash to Juror 52’s house after another trial defendant, Abdimajid Nur, asked her to help with the scheme.
During her plea hearing, Ali admitted that late on June 2, 2024, she gave a gift bag with $120,000 to Juror 52’s relative but pocketed the remaining $80,000 gathered for the bribery attempt. The targeted juror immediately alerted law enforcement and FBI agents recovered the money.
Ali also said that she lied to Nur about meeting Juror 52 at a bar and that the juror demanded $500,000 for an acquittal. Ali never spoke with the juror and the juror never agreed to take any cash. In reality, “this juror was terrified,” said Brasel in 2024 when she dismissed the juror from the case and ordered the remaining members of the panel to be sequestered.
On Aug. 6, Brasel sentenced Abdiaziz Farah to 28 years in prison for his leading role in the fraud scheme; he could face additional prison time when Doty sentences him in the jury bribery case. The judge has yet to schedule sentencing hearings for any of the jury bribery defendants.
Since 2022, federal prosecutors have charged 73 people with taking part in a conspiracy, centered around the now-defunct Twin Cities nonprofit Feeding Our Future, to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs by taking advantage of rule changes and lax oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic.
