Brother of Feeding Our Future defendants pleads guilty for role in juror bribe

The brother of two men who stood trial in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud scheme pleaded guilty Wednesday for his role in the attempted bribery of a juror last year.

Abdulkarim Farah drove a woman to a juror’s house last year to drop off a bag of $120,000 in cash in an attempt to get the juror to acquit his brothers.

In front of U.S. District Judge David Doty, Farah agreed to plead guilty to one count of bribery of a juror, a felony, in the scheme. The charge carries up to 15 years in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said during the hearing.

“Do you think you are guilty?” Doty asked in court.

“Yes, your honor,” Farah responded.

The rare incident, the first known attempted bribe of a juror in Minnesota in more than 60 years, was condemned by prosecutors as an attack on the justice system and led the judge in the case to sequester jurors for their safety as they deliberated on a verdict last year. Extra security measures were added to the courtroom then and in a separate trial last month.

A sentencing date for Farah has not yet been set.

Defense attorney Kevin DeVore previously said Farah, who was born in the U.S. and is a citizen, is the half-brother of the two men who were on trial.

Five people were charged in the attempted bribery case. Abdimajid Nur, 24, of Shakopee pleaded guilty to one count of bribery of a juror and Ladan Ali, the Seattle woman who followed the juror to her car and dropped off the bag of cash, also pleaded guilty.

Farah’s brother, Abdiaziz Farah, 36, of Savage, has pleaded not guilty to the bribery charges. He was accused of being the ringleader in the fraud scheme involving his Shakopee restaurant that was at the center of last year’s trial. He and Nur were among the five people convicted by the jury in that fraud case.

Farah’s other brother, Said Farah, 42, of Minneapolis, was acquitted by the jury of charges related to running a Minneapolis wholesaler with another defendant, but he was then taken into custody after he was charged in the bribe case. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

According to prosecutors, Ali was recruited by Nur and flew from her home in Seattle to offer the 23-year-old juror $120,000 in cash supplied by Said Farah. Ali, who was offered $150,000 for delivering the bribe, had followed the juror from the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis to her car, and then dropped off the bag of cash.

Abdulkarim Farah had helped Ali with surveillance of the juror. Prosecutors said Ali wanted to steal the money defendants gave her, but her plan was foiled when Abdulkarim Farah insisted on driving her to the juror’s house. He removed the license plates on Ali’s rental car, presumably to avoid detection, and recorded her delivering the cash.

The juror, who was the youngest on the jury and the only person of color, immediately reported the incident to police and was excused from jury duty along with a second juror who heard about the attempted bribe.

FBI agents later searched Abdiaziz Farah’s home and found a list of jurors’ names hidden in a clear water bottle, despite the fact that jurors’ names were never released publicly.

Because Abdulkarim Farah agreed to plead guilty, he cannot appeal his upcoming sentence. He remains in custody of the U.S. Marshal.