$120,000 Juror Bribe in a Hallmark Bag: A True Crime Case

[0:04] It's Sunday evening, June 2nd, 2024, in a suburb north of Minneapolis called Spring Lake Park. [0:13] A 23-year-old woman pulls into her driveway after a weekend away, and she walks through the front door, and her stepfather is waiting for her. And the look on his face tells her something is very wrong. A woman came to the house, he says, and she used your first name. She left a gift bag, you know, one of those Hallmark bags you pick up for a birthday party. It's white with butterflies and flowers on it. It's cheerful. And her stepfather had looked inside. And inside that bag, in $100 bills, $50 bills, and $20s, held together with rubber bands, was $120,000 in cash. And a message. According to the FBI affidavit, the woman told her stepfather, If juror 52 voted not guilty during jury deliberations There would be more of that present tomorrow. [1:22] The 23-year-old was juror number 52. She was serving on the biggest pandemic fraud trial in American history. The defendants had followed her home from the courthouse and purchased a GPS device to install on her car. She didn't know it, but she was being tracked. [1:45] They chose her because she was the youngest juror on the panel And because they believed She was the only person of color, They were wrong about everything About who she was About what she'd do Because she picked up her phone And called 911. [2:08] Hey, you're listening to True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. And if this is your first time here, subscribe and follow wherever you're listening right now. You can also find me at truecrimeunheard.com. That's truecrimeunheard.com. And you can subscribe for all the behind-the-case audio and case files. [2:33] So this is a case about what happens when the biggest fraud in American history collides with the justice system itself. It's about one juror who stood between a $250 million criminal conspiracy and a corrupt verdict. [2:50] Hey, I'm Steve Rode, and I've spent 30 years as an investigative writer tracking financial criminals and years in emergency services as a police dispatcher, surveillance photographer, and many years in the air as the chief pilot for public safety operations. I've investigated Ponzi schemes, embezzlers, corporate fraudsters, for three decades. And I want to be clear about something. The feeding our future fraud, the one we're going to talk about, a quarter billion dollars stolen for programs meant to feed children during a pandemic, that case alone would justify its own episode because it's effing staggering. But this episode isn't about the fraud. Well, not primarily. This episode is about what the fraudsters did when they realized they were about to be convicted it wasn't looking good for them. It's about the scheme they hatched, the woman they targeted, and the bag of cash they delivered to her doorstep. Oh, and the 23-year-old who refused to be bought. [4:06] Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick announcing the guilty verdict at a press conference listed the obstacles her team had to overcome. Including the attempted bribery of a juror in the first Feeding Our Future trial and the attempted witness tampering we saw during this trial. It's unprecedented. Unprecedented. You know, that word doesn't get used lightly by a U.S. Attorney who's been in the office 20 years. And her predecessor, Andrew Lugar, the man who indicted the bribery conspirators, put it even more starkly when he called it something out of a mob movie. But here's what makes this case different from a mob movie. The hero wasn't a federal agent or a prosecutor. The hero was a civilian doing her civic duty who was surveilled, stalked, and targeted, but who did exactly the right thing at the right moment when it mattered most. [5:15] To understand the bribery, you need to understand what was on trial that spring in Minneapolis. So, let me give you the short version. [5:25] Feeding Our Future was a Minneapolis nonprofit founded in 2016 to help get federal nutrition dollars to kids. And during COVID, new rules allowed for-profit restaurants to participate in programs that had previously been restricted to only nonprofits. The founder A woman named Amy Bach Saw an opportunity And not the kind that feeds children, According to court records The scheme claimed to have Served 90 million meals over two years, FBI surveillance of one site Showed it had roughly 40 visitors a day While claiming thousands of meals How can that be? Only about 3% of the funds went to actual food, and the rest, I mean, we're talking about a quarter billion dollars. Went to luxury cars, real estate, and overseas wire transfers. One defendant bought five luxury vehicles in six months. A Porsche, a Tesla, a GMC among them. Another funded a 12-story apartment building in Nairobi, Kenya. The fake meal rosters Listed invented children With the names like Serious problems. [6:50] Seventy-nine people were eventually charged. It was the largest pandemic relief fraud in United States history. [7:00] The lead prosecutor, Joe Thompson, described the moment the case first landed on his desk. A forensic accountant from the FBI, Pauline Rose, came to me and said she had something for me to look at. What she showed me was staggering. A monumental fraud that was being perpetrated on our state Something like nothing I'd ever seen before A brazen and corrupt scheme To take advantage of a program designed to feed needy children A scheme that took advantage of a global pandemic, A scheme that turned out to be the single largest COVID-19 fraud case In the entire United States of America By April 22, 2024, the first trial was underway. Seven defendants sat in a federal courtroom at the Diana E. Murphy United States Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. Farrah, age 35, of Savage, Minnesota. [8:07] And Saeed Shafi Farrah, age 42, of Minneapolis. Their slice of the fraud was $47 million funneled through a restaurant called Empire Cuisine and Market in Chicopee, Minnesota. The trial lasted six weeks, six long weeks. And closing arguments began on Friday, May 31st. The jury was about to deliberate. And the defendants were about to do something that even the U.S. Attorney, a man who had prosecuted mob families in Brooklyn, had never seen before. Thompson would later describe what this case had done to his state. All too often, our state has been known for fraud. Befeating our future case has come to symbolize the problem of fraud in our state. It has become the shame of Minnesota. The shame of Minnesota was about to get worse. [9:09] According to the plea agreements filed in this case, the conspiracy began soon after the jury was seated on April 22nd. Abdi Aziz Farah, the ringleader, already facing decades in prison for the fraud, identified Juror 52 as a candidate to bribe and directed his co-conspirators to research her. According to court records, the conspirators researched Juror 52 online, including Juror 52's Facebook account. [9:43] And through that research, they identified Juror 52's home address and found information about Juror 52's background and family members. They targeted her because, and I'm quoting from the plea agreement, she was the youngest juror and they believed her to be the only juror of color. She was 23 years old living in Spring Lake Park and the defendants made a calculation. A young woman of color would find $100,000 life-changing. She would be susceptible to their arguments. Abdul Karim Farah, the ringleader's younger brother, was 24 years old. He became the surveillance operative. According to his plea agreement, he conducted surveillance of Juror 52 and her house. He identified her vehicle. discovered where she parked during jury service, and he knew which parking garage in downtown Minneapolis she left her car. [10:53] He sent a map of the parking ramp to his co-conspirators, and he purchased a GPS tracking device for her car. [11:07] Luger says they targeted the youngest and only juror of color and started following her. At least 19 times in a three-day span, the FBI says a suspect vehicle can be traced to Juror 52's Spring Lake Park home. Just think about that. 19 times in three days. So I want to pause here, let that sink in. 19 times. A sitting juror in a federal trial was being tracked by GPS Followed from the courthouse and surveilled at her home By the people whose guilt she was about to judge. [11:43] And they weren't just trying to buy her vote No, no, no They were trying to turn her into their advocate on the jury, According to the indictment The conspirators drafted a written list of instructions for Juror 52 They had a shopping list The instructions directed her to vote Not guilty on all counts for all defendants And to convince all the remaining jurors to mark Not guilty for all defendants on all counts, They compiled a list of arguments to convince other jurors Arguments designed to exploit race And the document read We are immigrants They don't respect us It said the government was Prejudiced against people of color It said people of color and immigrants Are being prosecuted for the fault of other people. [12:41] They wanted her to carry those arguments Into the jury room They weren't just buying a single not guilty vote No, they were trying to engineer a hung jury By weaponizing racial grievances, But they needed someone to deliver the money and the message And the person they chose would end up running a con of her own Inside of theirs. [13:17] Abdimajid Muhammad Noor was 23 years old, a co-defendant of the fraud trial, and according to the plea agreement, he was the only one who recruited the delivery person. He recruited his girlfriend. Her name was Leydin Muhammad Ali, age 31. She lived in Seattle, Washington, 2,500 miles from Minnesota. According to the government's sentencing memorandum, Noor recruited her to help plan and deliver the bribe. She was promised $150,000 in cash for the job. These folks had a lot of money to spread around. On May 17, 2024, Ali flew from Seattle to Minneapolis just to meet Noor and discuss the plan. Then she flew back to Seattle. And then on May 30th, Thursday, the day before closing arguments, she flew to Minneapolis again to execute. [14:20] Nur gave her a photograph of Juror 52's car and a map of the parking garage. On Friday, May 31st, the first day of closing arguments at approximately 4.30 p.m., Ali parked near the exit of the parking ramp and waited for 80 minutes. At approximately 5.50 p.m., Juror 52 drove out, And Ali followed her home, According to the government's sentencing memorandum Ali then continued to surveil Juror 52's home Over the ensuing three days Three days of watching Of learning the routines The comings and the goings The house layout Who lived there. [15:13] But here's where this story takes its unexpected turn. According to her plea agreement, Ali was concerned that the plan would not work and that she would not get paid. So she devised her own scheme, a Khan inside the Khan. On June 1st, Saturday evening, Ali called Noor with a fabricated story. She told him she had approached Juror 52 at a bar, that the juror was interested in taking the bribe, that the juror wanted $500,000 for a not guilty verdict and wanted the money delivered at noon the next day when she'd be home alone. According to the plea agreement, none of that was true. Lad and Ali did not speak with Juror 52 And Juror 52 never, ever agreed to accept a bribe, She had never spoken to the juror Never been in a bar with her Never made contact with her of any kind The entire story was a lie Designed to inflate the price So Ali could pocket the difference. [16:38] Nur believed every word He relayed Ali's account To Abdi Aziz Farah Who said We can gather the bribe money And the machinery started turning. [16:55] Hey, let me step outside this story for a moment, because I've spent 30 years investigating financial criminals. I told you that. People who build empires on lies. And there's a pattern I've seen over and over. The con never stays contained. When people get away with one fraud, they don't stop. It's in their blood. They escalate. They start to believe they're smarter than the system. The defendants stole a quarter billion dollars from children's food programs. They bought luxury cars and built apartments in Kenya with money that was supposed to feed kids. And when the system finally caught up with them, when they were sitting in a federal courtroom facing decades in prison, their instinct wasn't remorse. It was to attack the system itself. [17:51] And then, inside that scheme, The woman they hired to deliver the bribe Was running her own con Stealing from the people Who hired her to commit a crime, It's fraud all the way down, That's not desperation That's entitlement It's the same psychology I've told you about before And I've seen in every financial criminal Who gets caught They believe the rules don't apply to them, even the rules of the courtroom even the rules of their own conspiracy. [18:33] At 11.03 p.m. on Saturday, June 1st, Abdezeez Farah called his brother Saeed, known by the nickname Abdi, which means uncle in Somali. According to court records, he told Saeed the plan and asked for help gathering the cash. At 12.56 a.m., nearly one in the morning on Sunday, Saeed got an encrypted message on Signal, and the message read, Please have the money ready by 10 Please It's very important for everything that we have, Everything we have He was facing decades in prison And this was his Hail Mary. [19:18] Saeed Farah owned a business called Bresra Wholesalers in South Minneapolis, and according to his plea agreement, he spent that morning gathering the money. He obtained cash from multiple individuals, and he obtained cash from a hawala located near the Carmel Mall. [19:40] A hawala is an informal money transfer system, Centuries-old, trust-based Used extensively in Somali communities worldwide No bank accounts, no wire receipts No government documents, no paper trail The Somali diaspora sends approximately $1.3 billion annually to Somalia Through Hawala networks Much of it from the United States After banks stopped serving Somali money transfer companies Hawala became essential infrastructure And in this case, it was the perfect way to assemble $200,000 In totally, perfectly, untraceable cash And according to Saeed Farah's plea agreement He wasn't the only one gathering money A former feeding our future employee Who is charged in another indictment With participating in the fraud scheme To obtain child nutrition program funds Also worked to gather cash for the bribe, So let that register Someone already charged with stealing From children's food programs Helped raise money to bribe a juror In the trial for stealing From children's food programs I don't know. [21:05] That afternoon, Saeed and Abduziz met Nur outside Bushra Wholesalers. According to court records, Saeed brought Nur a cardboard box and inside, $200,000 in various denominations. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, all gathered hastily from multiple sources. Saeed told Nur to be safe. Be safe. Like he was sending his kid off to school, not handing over a cardboard box of cash for federal crime. Nur drove to a parking lot in Bloomington, Minnesota, and met Laidun Ali. He handed her the box. Ali opened it, took out the cash, and placed it in one of two Hallmark gift bags she purchased. White with butterflies and flowers, beautiful and pretty, and she left the cardboard box and the second unused gift bag in Noor's car. But Ali didn't put all $200,000 in the bag. According to her plea agreement, she kept $80,000 for herself. [22:26] The bag woman was stealing from the people who hired her to deliver the bribe. And those leftover items in Nur's car, the empty cardboard box, the second Hallmark bag, would later become evidence. This shouldn't come as a shock The conspirators didn't fully trust Ali They didn't trust Ali And they remained concerned that Juror 52 Would not follow through with an acquittal, So they sent Abdul Karim The youngest brother, the surveillance man to meet Ali at a gas station near Juror 52's house. His instructions were to drive her to the juror's home in her rental car and record the delivery on video. A proof of delivery receipt for a criminal transaction. [23:31] Ali had wanted to drive herself, according to court records. This prevented Ladhan Ali from stealing all of the bribe money. She would have taken everything if Abdul Karim hadn't been there. At approximately 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, June 2nd, Abdul Karim drove Ali to the nearby Target store. He went inside and purchased a screwdriver. Then in the parking lot, he used it to remove the license plates from Ali's rental car. A Mazda, so it couldn't be identified at the juror's house. Target's surveillance cameras captured the purchase, and then they waited, and the delivery was planned for the evening. At approximately 8.50 p.m., the last light of a Minneapolis summer evening fading from the sky, Abdul Karim drove Ali to Juror 52's home in Spring Lake Park. Ali stepped out of the plateless rental car, carrying the Hallmark gift bag. [24:41] Only problem, Juror 52 wasn't home. Her stepfather answered the door. Ali used Juror 52's first name, and according to the FBI affidavit, she told the stepfather, this is a present for Juror 52, and that if Jura 52 voted not guilty during jury deliberations, there would be more of that present tomorrow. [25:10] She handed over the bag. Inside, $120,000 in $100, $50, and $20 bills held together with rubber bands. And after the woman left, the stepfather took a peek inside the bag and saw what the FBI affidavit describes as a substantial amount of cash in various dollar denominations. [25:37] Abdul Karim filmed the entire delivery from the car with his cell phone. And according to the government's sentencing memorandum, the video shows Laden approach the front door and hand a bag containing the bribery payments to Juror 52's stepfather. He then sent the video via signal. At approximately 9 p.m., there was a text and it said, still posted outside of the house, Abdi. Still posted outside. Someone was still watching the juror's home after the delivery, still surveilling, still waiting. Then at approximately 10.18 p.m., Abdi Aziz forwarded the delivery video to Saeed with a five-word message that would become one of the most damning pieces of evidence in the case. Watch and delete, Abti. [26:45] Majora 52 rolled up and arrived at home that evening, and her stepfather told her what had happened, who had come to the door, what she'd said, and what was inside the bag. The 23-year-old did something that prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement would later call just heroic. She didn't hesitate. She didn't deliberate. She didn't have to be persuaded. She didn't count the money. She called 911. Spring Lake Park Police responded. They took custody of the Hallmark gift bag and approximately $120,000 in cash, and federal authorities were contacted immediately. [27:34] And think about what the defendants had invested in this woman. Weeks of research, her Facebook account dissected, her home address found, a GPS tracker purchased, her car followed from the courthouse, her daily routine mapped, photo of her car, a diagram of the parking ramp, three days of physical surveillance of her house, an 80-minute stakeout in the parking garage, two cross-country flights from Seattle, $200,000 in cash gathered from a Hawala network an acquittal manual with racial arguments drafted for her to carry into the jury room, all of it every dollar every hour every calculation built on one assumption, that she could be bought and, They were catastrophically wrong. According to U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick, who would later say, Juror 52, who could not be corrupted and immediately alerted law enforcement, represents the best of Minnesota. But the trial wasn't over yet, and the morning of June 3rd was about to become one of the most extraordinary courtroom days in the history of the District of Minnesota. [29:03] Hey, quick pause. If you're finding this story as extraordinary as I did when I read the court documents, do me a favor. Subscribe or follow right now. Hit follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening. And if you want the full case files for this episode, the court documents, the timeline, the research? You can find out how to get those by going to truecrimeunheard.com slash subscribe. I go in deep over there. Now, back to that Monday morning courtroom. So here we are. It's Monday morning. Jurors arrive at 8.45 a.m. At the Diana Murphy Courthouse for what they expect to be a normal day of jury service. But something's wrong. Juror 52 is not there. No explanation is given. A fellow juror identified in media reports as juror 17, later described the moment publicly. Yeah, Monday morning we all show up for jury duty in the jury room at 8.45 as planned. And what was unusual was a juror 52 wasn't there. [30:26] The judge interviewed each juror individually, asking if anyone had been contacted about the trial. She then dismissed juror 52 from the panel for her safety, and she would later describe the young woman as terrified. The judge sequestered the remaining jury. She detained all seven defendants, revoking their bond. As she ordered every defendant to place their cell phone in airplane mode And immediately surrender them to law enforcement. [31:02] Now, what happened next Is one of the most audacious acts of courtroom obstruction I've ever encountered In 30 years of doing this stuff, An FBI agent had been sitting in that courtroom for the entire six-week trial, He knew these defendants. He'd watched their body language, their rhythms, their tells. And that morning, according to the FBI affidavit, the agent observed Abdi Aziz Farah, who appeared to be nervous, which was in contrast to his notably laid-back manner throughout the preceding six weeks of the trial. Notably laid-back, I mean, for six weeks, while his freedom Hung in the balance, He projected calm Confidence And the demeanor of a man who believed He had a card Left to play. [32:04] And now that card had been discovered, and the FBI agent was watching him fall apart. The agent observed him continue to use his phone for what appeared to be longer than necessary to place the phone in airplane mode. When agents later examined the phone, they found the screen displaying, according to the FBI affidavit, Factory settings as if it was a brand new phone Being set up for the first time, If you've ever used an iPhone You recognize that Apple hello screen The screen you see when you take an iPhone Out of the box for the first time, You see this guy was so afraid He had factory reset his iPhone Right there in the courtroom In the middle of his own trial Minutes from being told to surrender it, With federal agents watching, with a judge on the bench, with prosecutors feet away, he wiped every message, every photo, every piece of evidence, including the video of the bribe delivery. The signal conversations and the encrypted instructions. He wasn't the only one destroying evidence. Abdul Karim uninstalled and deleted signal from his phone. [33:30] Noor deleted the bribery video and the Signal app. Saeed Farah deleted the video from his iPhone. But it was too late. Ali's fingerprints were on the Hallmark bag. Co-conspirators would cooperate, and the video had already been forwarded, and the 911 call had already been made. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson told the court that day, This is outrageous behavior This is stuff that happens in mob movies And when U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar Announced the bribery indictments Three weeks later He went even further This is more than just a mob movie This is a chilling attack On our system of justice, A chilling attack on our system of justice From a man who prosecuted the five families in Brooklyn. [34:33] I need to talk about Juror 52 for a moment. Not the legal significance of what she did. That's obvious. I want to talk about the human significance. I was a police dispatcher for two years. I took 911 calls from people in crisis, and I can tell you, the decision to pick up the phone and call isn't always as simple as it sounds. Fear makes people freeze. Confusion makes people delay And self-interest makes people rationalize. [35:06] This was a 23-year-old woman She came home to find out that someone had delivered a bag With $120,000 in cash to her family's house, Someone who knew her first name Who knew where she lived Who had been watching her for days This was not just a legal case This was a personal safety crisis, These people know your address They know your schedule They've been following you And the implicit message behind every bribe is the same, If money doesn't work Something else might, She called 911 immediately No hesitation That takes a kind of moral clarity That most people never get tested on and when they do, not everyone passes but she did. [36:12] Despite the bribery attempt The trial continued A second juror was dismissed, After learning about the scheme From a family member, Both were replaced with alternates That's why we have them On June 7, 2024 Four days after the bribery was revealed The jury Delivered its verdict, Five hours of deliberation For a six-week trial. [36:44] K-A-R-E-11 put it in perspective. Yeah, it was extremely fast. Five hours of deliberation for five weeks of testimony, just one hour for each week of testimony they heard. But it's a clear sign that it was not a difficult case for them. The evidence was overwhelming, and they just didn't fight over it at all. They all were on the same page and came back with a verdict right after lunch. And the lead prosecutor agreed. The fact that they returned a verdict so quickly after such a long trial, I think speaks volumes as to the job the team did. And frankly, the amount of evidence against the defendants and how awful the frauds came from. Five of the seven defendants, guilty. Abdi Aziz Farah, the notably laid-back man who had factory reset his phone in front of the FBI, convicted on 23 of 24 counts. [37:40] And Abdi Majid Noor? Convicted on 10 of 13. Two defendants were acquitted. One of them, Saeed Farah, the brother. The man who gathered $200,000 from a hawala near the Carmel Mall. The man who carried a cardboard box of cash out to a car. The man who received the delivery video and the message, Watch and delete Abdi. The jury had found him not guilty of fraud. [38:15] And here is perhaps The most extraordinary irony In this entire case, Saeed Farah The one brother The jury acquitted Would be indicted Weeks later For the very bribery scheme That was supposed To secure his freedom, He won his fraud trial On the merits Legitimately, And then he lost Everything to the crime he committed trying to fix a trial he was going to win anyway. The jurors, by the way, didn't learn about the bribery attempt until after they had rendered their verdict. Juror 17 recalled, it would not make any sense until after we rendered our verdict and then we were told what happened. And then, learning for the first time what Juror 52 had done, he said, the significance of Juror 52's integrity, to say, no, I'm not going to accept your bribe. I'm going to be a woman of integrity the bribery failed completely the jury convicted on all the merits and the scheme designed to corrupt the trial became its own separate prosecution. [39:39] All five conspirators were indicted On June 25, 2024 On charges including Conspiracy to bribe a juror Bribery of a juror And corruptly influencing a juror Abdi Aziz Farah alone Faced an additional count of obstruction of justice For the phone factory reset, Not looking too smart now, is it? [40:06] One by one they pleaded guilty Nur went first July 23rd, 2024 barely a month after indictment he told the court I want to get on the right path he was 23 years old and according to background research he'd pick rocks from crop fields at age 10 worked 14 hour days as a child and ran the 800 meters in high school now he faced a decade in federal prison, Laden Ali pleaded guilty September 5th, 2024, while awaiting sentencing on Valentine's Day 2025. She was arrested in Hennepin County for third-degree driving while impaired, a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or above, after rear-ending another driver and then fleeing the scene without giving her information and then obstructing the peace officer who caught up with her. She was on federal Pretrial release at the time For bribing a juror. [41:14] Abdul Karim Farah pleaded guilty. April 2nd, 2025, his attorney described him as a young, naive, and blindly loyal brother. Abdias' Farah, the ringleader, pleaded guilty. June 17th, 2025. His hearing lasted 43 minutes, and when it was over, he was taken in custody by the U.S. Marshals. He was already serving a 28-year sentence for the underlying fraud. The bribery sentence would be added on top. [41:54] And Saeed Farah, acquitted of fraud, guilty of bribery, pleaded guilty last on August 21st, the fifth and final defendant. [42:11] On March 4, 2026, Abdul Karim Farah became the first of the five to be sentenced. His defense attorney painted a portrait of a young man who should never have been in that courtroom. No, it's a miscarriage of justice. According to the sentencing memorandum, Abdul Karim was born in Minneapolis in November 2000. His father left for Kenya when he was 10 and never came back. I mean, that's sad. He had 11 siblings, but had little or no contact with seven of them. He spent his childhood, in the defense's words, focused on educational and religious activities and dug see at a mosque on weekends, dug see being traditional Somali Koran school. He graduated high school in 2019. He had never been issued a speeding ticket in his life He was clean. [43:14] In 2021, his brother Abdiazez offered him a job It was the first sustained contact they'd had, And that job, the connection to his brother that he barely knew Is what pulled him into a $47 million fraud scheme and then a juror bribery conspiracy. The defense argued he was an unwitting participant. A young man who didn't organize the bribery didn't know money was involved until the day of the delivery and simply followed directions from his friend and his brother. His blind loyalty, they said, doomed him. They asked for time served, roughly 16 months, in the county jail, which the defense described as hard time. A six-foot by eight-foot cell, absolutely no exposure to the sun or fresh air, frequent jail-wide lockdowns lasting days. [44:23] You know, the government saw it differently. The sentencing memorandum called his crime profoundly serious It noted that Abdul Karim enjoyed every advantage Including a stable and supportive family And excellent educational opportunities It pointed out that he personally conducted surveillance of the sitting juror Purchased a screwdriver to remove license plates Drove the delivery car And filmed the bribe being handed over, And then prosecutors wrote a line That I think captures The gravity of this case As well as anything I've read. [45:10] It's not hyperbolic to say that without trust that our criminal courts will deliver justice fairly. The vitality of our democracy is threatened. Unquote. They continued, Others who might consider bribing a juror must know that doing so will result in devastating consequences. Nothing less than a sentence at the high end of the guidelines range. Will suffice to send a message that justice is not and never will be for sale. They requested 57 months, and the average sentence for defendants with the same offense level and criminal history over the past four years was 29 months, and the government wanted nearly double. [46:09] The judge gave them exactly what they asked for 57 months, 4 years and 9 months The high end of the guideline And the judge said, Properly functioning juries are the core of our criminal justice system And he praised juror 52 for resisting the very substantial bribe, Abdul Karim Farah expressed remorse Like they usually do He said he wished he could take it back He said he hopes to attend college after prison, Four more sentencings remain pending. [46:53] Before I bring this story to a close, I need to acknowledge the victims who aren't in any courtroom. The kiddos. 300,000 Minnesota kids face food insecurity. The $250 million stolen through feeding our future? That was money that was supposed to feed them. Could have funded weekend meal programs in every Minnesota school for eight years. Weekend meal demand in Minnesota Increased 34% in the 2024-2025 school year alone, Instead The defendants bought Porsches and Teslas And built apartments And sent money through underground networks And when they got caught They spent $200,000 more trying to buy their way out With help from another charged Feeding Our Future Defendant. [47:53] As an investigative writer, I've covered financial crime for 30 years, and this case represents something I've rarely seen. A crime so layered that the cover-up constitutes an entirely separate criminal conspiracy targeting the justice system itself. Fraud upon fraud upon fraud. Even the bag woman was defrauding the fraudsters. [48:17] The fraud was the crime, the bribery was the contempt, And those children, the ones who were supposed to eat, They're still waiting And if you're as pissed off as I am I think we all have the right to be. [48:40] As of this recording, here's where the Feeding Our Future Juror bribery case stands, Abdias' Farah is serving 28 years for the underlying fraud The second longest white-collar crime sentence in Minnesota history Plus $47.9 million in restitution, People aren't going to see that His bribery sentence will be added on top And his guidelines range 97 to 121 months 8 to 10 more years He has enhancements for being the leader For the phone factory reset and for committing the bribery while already on federal pretrial release for the fraud. Saeed Farah, the man acquitted of fraud who pleaded guilty to the bribery, awaits sentencing. He faces 51 to 78 months. He also carries an enhancement for committing the offense while on pretrial release. [49:47] Adem Yajid Noor, who told the court, I want to get on the right path, is serving 10 years for the fraud and his bribery sentence is pending. Ladhan Ali, the woman from Seattle who fabricated a bar meeting, stole $80,000 of the bribe money and got arrested for drunk driving on Valentine's Day, awaits sentencing. She faces 57 to 71 months. [50:13] Abdul Karim Farah is serving 57 months Amy Bach, the founder of Feeding Our Future Who orchestrated the original quarter-billion-dollar fraud, Was convicted on all seven counts in March 2025 Her sentencing is still scheduled, And then there's a detail that speaks to the larger forces Swirling around this case In January 2026, all four original prosecutors Who built this bribery case, including Joseph Thompson Who had risen to acting U.S. attorney, Resigned from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office And the catalyst was a dispute with the Department of Justice over an unrelated investigation. The office went from 70 assistant U.S. attorneys to as few as 17. The remaining bribery sentencings will be handled by prosecutors with no connection to the original case. [51:22] The system that brought this case to justice is itself under internal strain. [51:35] I want to leave you with this. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar, the man who prosecuted the five families in Brooklyn, who called this case a chilling attack on our system of justice, said something about Juror 52 that stayed with me through every page of court documents. We will finish the work Juror 52 started. We will bring these defendants to justice. She made a difference. Hopefully, today's verdict will help turn the page on this awful chapter in our state's history. Kirkpatrick called her the best of Minnesota and Lugar called her the true hero of this story. And he's right. In a case defined by audacity, a quarter billion dollar fraud, a bribery scheme hatched inside a federal courtroom, a phone factory reset in front of a judge and a bag woman who stole from her own co-conspirators, An ex-girlfriend recruited to deliver a bribe. A screwdriver purchased at Target to remove license plates. A cardboard box of cash from an underground money network. The most remarkable thing that happened was also the simplest. A 23-year-old woman came home. Her stepfather told her what happened, and she called 911. [52:57] She wasn't trained for this. She wasn't a federal agent or a prosecutor or a judge. She was a citizen doing her civic duty. And when the biggest test of her integrity arrived in a butterfly-covered Hallmark bag with $100 bills stacked with 50s and stacked with 20s and held together with rubber bands, she didn't waver. The defendants assumed her youth made her naive. Her background made her vulnerable. Her position made her purchasable. And the color of her skin made her available. She proved them wrong about all of it. [53:44] Juror 52, who could not be corrupted and immediately alerted law enforcement, actually does represent the best of Minnesota, and maybe the best of all of us. [54:00] Hey, if this story moved you, if you want to know more about cases like this before anyone else covers them, subscribe to the show at truecrimeunheard.com slash subscribe. Over on Substack, I publish the full case files, behind-the-scenes research, and bonus content for every episode. So go to truecrimeunheard.com slash subscribe. And if you've been listening for a while and haven't left a rating yet, what the hell's wrong with you? This is your moment. A five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes 10 seconds and helps others define these stories. I would greatly appreciate it. Until next time, this is Steve. I want you to stay curious. Stay safe. Stay subscribed. Yeah. See ya. In cases you ain't heard about. 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