Five people have been charged with conspiring to bribe a Minnesota juror with a bag of $120,000 in cash in exchange for the acquittal of defendants in one of the country’s largest Covid-related fraud cases, the US attorney’s office and the FBI announced on Wednesday.
Court documents made public reveal an extravagant scheme in which the accused researched the juror’s personal information on social media, surveilled her, tracked her daily habits and bought a GPS device to install on her car. Authorities believe the defendants targeted the woman, known as juror 52, because she was the youngest and they believed her to be the only person of color on the panel.
The juror reported the bribery attempt and was removed from the case before deliberations began.
The bribe attempt brought renewed attention to the trial of seven Minnesota defendants accused of coordinating to steal more than $40m from a federal program that was supposed to feed children during the coronavirus pandemic. More than $250m in federal funds were taken overall in the scheme and only about $50m has been recovered, authorities say.
Investigators spent three weeks reviewing mountains of evidence to uncover the plot, which US attorney Andrew Luger described as “something out of a mob movie”.
The five people charged attempted to win an acquittal not on the evidence, but “through an elaborate scheme to infiltrate this jury”, he said.
According to the indictment, the plan was hatched in mid-May. Ladan Mohamed Ali, accused of delivering the bribe money to the juror’s home, flew from Seattle to Minneapolis on 17 May to meet with Abdimajid Mohamed Nur and allegedly agreed to deliver the bribe money to the home of juror 52 in exchange for $150,000.
She returned to Minneapolis two weeks later on 30 May and a day later attempted to follow the woman home as she left a parking ramp near the courthouse.
On June 2, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah instructed Nur to meet at Said Shafii Farah’s business to pick up the bribe money, the indictment says. When Nur arrived at the business, Said Farah gave him a cardboard box containing the money and told Nur to “be safe”. Nur gave the money to Ali after picking her up in a parking lot later in the day. Hours later, Ali and Abdulkarim Shafii Farah drove to a Target store and purchased a screwdriver, which they used to remove the license plates from Ali’s rental car before driving to the juror’s home.
As Farah stayed in the car and filmed the encounter, Ali knocked on the door and was greeted by a relative of the juror. Ali handed the gift bag to her and explained there would be more money if the juror voted to acquit.
The juror called police after she got home and gave them the bag, according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit noted that the woman who left the bag knew the juror’s first name. Names of the jurors have not been made public, but the list of people with access to them included prosecutors, defense lawyers and the seven defendants.
On 3 June, after the bribe attempt was reported, US district judge Nancy Brasel ordered all seven defendants to surrender their phones. Abdiaziz Farah conducted a factory reset of his iPhone to delete all the messages and photos detailing the plot, according to court records.
Two days later, FBI agents executed a search warrant on Abdiaziz Farah’s home and found a typed list of the jurors hidden inside a plastic water bottle.
