Five people were charged Wednesday 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-19-related fraud cases, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI announced Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. The juror reported the bribery attempt and was removed from the case before deliberations began. But court documents 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. According to court documents, the group came up with a “blueprint” of arguments for the juror to help persuade other jurors to acquit, injecting the idea that prosecutors were motivated by racial animus: “(w)e are immigrants, they don’t respect us,” the list of proposed arguments read.
The bribe attempt brought renewed attention to the trial of seven Minnesota defendants accused of coordinating to steal more than $40 million from a federal program that was supposed to feed children during the coronavirus pandemic. More than $250 million in federal funds were taken overall in the scheme and only about $50 million has been recovered, authorities say. Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali are each charged with one count of conspiracy to bribe a juror, one count of bribery of a juror and one count of corruptly influencing a juror, according to the indictment. Abdiaziz Shafii Farah is also charged with one count of obstruction of justice. Abdiaziz Shafii Farah and Abdimajid Mohamed Nur were among five convicted in the fraud trial earlier this month while Said Shafii Farah was acquitted. Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Ladan Mohamed Ali were not involved.