Five people have been accused of offering a cash bribe worth $120,000 (£94,000) to a juror to thwart a conviction in a US pandemic fraud trial.
The unnamed 23-year-old juror reported receiving a gift bag full of cash during the closing days of the federal criminal trial in Minneapolis.
“These are things that happen 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 charged with bribery are three who stood trial for providing false names of non-existent children they claimed to feed 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 have been 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 “chilling attack on our justice system,” adding that he was grateful the juror “could not be bribed.”
Prosecutors say the group targeted the woman because she was the youngest on the panel and “they believed she was the only juror of color.”
The jury was hearing a trial over the theft of more than $40 million by employees of Feeding Our Future, a now-defunct charity that received money from a federal food assistance program meant to feed hungry children.
Earlier this month, the jury convicted five suspects in the embezzlement case, but acquitted two others.
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur and Said Shafii Farah had wanted the juror to convince the rest of the panel that the prosecutors were racist so they would acquit the defendants, Mr Luger said.
The prosecutor said the defendants had devised a manual to nominate the jury, telling them: “We are immigrants. They don’t respect us or care about us.”
Prosecutors say one of the suspects, Ladan Mohamed Ali, who was not charged in the original plot, flew from Seattle to Minneapolis on May 30 and began monitoring 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 relative that more money would be paid out if she successfully convinced fellow jurors to vote against conviction, prosecutors said.
Bribing a juror is a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, this is the first criminal case in the state involving an attempt to bribe a federal juror.
