Five charged with bribery plot from jury in Covid fraud trial

Five people have been accused of offering a $120,000 (£94,000) cash bribe to a juror to overturn a conviction in a US pandemic fraud trial.

The unnamed juror, 23, reported receiving a gift bag full of cash in the final days of the federal criminal trial in Minneapolis.

“This is stuff that happens in mob movies,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said earlier this month after the alleged scheme came to light.

Prosecutors have charged 70 people with stealing $250 million from federal food programs during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Among the five accused of bribery are three who were on trial for providing false names of non-existent children they claimed to be feeding and creating a fraudulent paper trail to pocket millions of dollars.

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali were charged with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror and corruptly influencing a juror.

At a news conference Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger called the alleged bribery attempt a “frightening attack on our justice system,” adding that he was grateful the jury “could not be bought.”

Prosecutors say the group targeted the woman because she was the youngest on the panel and “they thought she was the only black juror.”

The jury was on trial for the theft of more than $40 million by workers at Feeding Our Future, a now-defunct charity that received money from a federal food aid program meant to feed hungry children.

Earlier this month, the jury convicted five of the defendants in the embezzlement case but acquitted two others.

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah wanted the jury to convince the rest of the panel that the prosecutors were racist so they would acquit the defendants, according to Mr. Luger.

The prosecutor said the suspects devised an instruction manual to ennoble the jury in which they would be told: “We are immigrants. They don’t respect us and they don’t care about us.”

Prosecutors say one of the defendants, Ladan Mohamed Ali, who was not charged in the original plot, flew to Minneapolis from Seattle on May 30 and began tracking the juror’s movements before approaching her.

On the night of June 2, she and another defendant allegedly visited the juror’s home and delivered cash to a relative of hers.

They promised the family member more money would be delivered if he successfully persuaded surrounding colleagues to vote against conviction, prosecutors said.

Bribing a juror is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, this is the state’s first criminal case of attempting to bribe a federal juror.