A second Minnesota juror has been replaced days after another person serving on the panel in the $40 million fraud case said someone left her nearly $120,000 in cash in exchange for an acquittal.
Both jurors have been replaced with alternates in the trial against seven people accused of misusing millions of dollars meant to feed children during the pandemic.
The second juror was removed Tuesday after a family member asked them if the jury was being sequestered because of the alleged bribe.
The first juror said she was offered a bribe on the eve of deliberations, when a woman delivered a gift bag full of cash and left it with a relative, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit. She said she was not home Sunday when the cash was delivered.
The jurors' names have not been made public, but the visitor knew the woman's first name and told her relative that there would “be more of that present tomorrow” if the juror agreed to find the defendants not guilty, the affidavit said. The juror reported the incident to the police.
The FBI said all of the defendants, their attorneys and the prosecutors had access to that juror’s identifying information. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered the defendants to surrender their cellphones and all seven were taken into custody.
The alleged bribe happened as the trial, the first in a massive Covid relief funding scheme that prosecutors say is the largest of its kind, was coming to a close. The seven defendants are among 70 people charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota in an alleged $250 million fraud scheme involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Eighteen have pleaded guilty, officials said.
Feeding Our Future was a sponsor participating in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. Prosecutors said the nonprofit’s employees recruited people and entities to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout Minnesota. Feeding Our Future went from receiving and disbursing about $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021, prosecutors said.
The federal program was meant to provide free, nutritious meals to children and low-income families. Prosecutors said the defendants received more than $40 million from the program. While the defendants claimed to have fed millions of children, prosecutors said they used money on personal luxuries — including multiple homes and properties and luxury vehicles — from April 2020 to January 2022, according to a criminal complaint.
“This was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said in a September 2022 statement when prosecutors first announced the federal charges. “These defendants exploited a program designed to provide nutritious food to needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they prioritized their own greed.”
The sequestered jury is now deliberating the fates of Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, and Hayat Mohamed Nur. They are accused of felony conspiracy, wire fraud, federal programs bribery and money laundering charges. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Regarding the alleged juror bribery incident, Frederick Goetz, an attorney representing Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, told NBC News that his client “had absolutely no part in it.” None of the other six defendants’ attorneys responded to requests for comment Tuesday.
