Jury finds five of seven defendants guilty in Feeding Our Future trial

A federal jury in Minneapolis found five of seven defendants guilty Friday for their roles in a scheme to defraud the government of money intended to feed hungry children — part of what prosecutors are calling one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States.

The five guilty defendants were convicted on the majority of the felony charges they faced, including wire fraud conspiracy. Two defendants were acquitted.

The seven-week trial was the first in a broader FBI-led case that charged 70 people in Minnesota with stealing $250 million from federal food programs.

“The verdict confirms what we’ve known all along, which is that defendants falsified documents, they lied and they fraudulently claimed to be feeding millions of meals to children in Minnesota during COVID,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said in a news conference after the verdicts were read.

The seven defendants had ties to a Shakopee restaurant and received about $40 million. Prosecutors presented 1,300 exhibits to the jury to make the case that they submitted phony invoices to the government, along with rosters of made-up children’s names and improbably high meal count forms.

It was a “depraved” and “brazen” scheme that outraged Minnesotans across the state, Thompson said. He said prosecutors were pleased with the verdicts and proud of the trial.

Prosecutors didn’t take questions from reporters, citing pending trials for more than three dozen other defendants tied to the St. Anthony nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Those trials could take place this year.

The mixed verdicts meant the jury carefully considered each of the defendants’ charges over four days of deliberations, said Joseph Daly, emeritus professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

“I don’t think you could look at this as a defeat for the prosecution or a victory for the prosecution,” Daly said.

The defendants — six men and a woman — claimed federal reimbursements for serving 18 million meals at 50 food sites across Minnesota, from Rochester and Owatonna to St. Cloud. Feeding Our Future and the St. Paul nonprofit Partners in Nutrition oversaw the sites.

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35, was convicted of 23 crimes; Mohamed Jama Ismail, 51, was convicted of three counts; Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, was convicted on 10 counts; Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, 33, was convicted of four crimes; and Hayat Mohamed Nur, 27, was found guilty on three counts.

The most serious charges carry a possible penalty of 20 years in prison.

Farah’s brother, Said Shafii Farah, 41, and Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, 33, who started a Minneapolis wholesaler, were found not guilty.

“The jury listened to the evidence and did their jobs,” Aftin’s attorney Andrew Garvis said.

Steve Schleicher, attorney for Said Farah, said his client was grateful to be exonerated and eager to move on. He said his client had supplied groceries to other defendants and there was no evidence of a conspiracy.

Said Farah and Aftin were ordered to be released from custody; the other five defendants remain in jail.

The defendants were suddenly arrested Monday after the attempted bribery of a juror. Just before final closing arguments, a woman left a bag with about $120,000 in cash at the home of a 23-year-old juror, telling a relative of the juror that she would receive more money if she voted to acquit.

The woman used the juror’s first name even though the jury’s names were not made public. The juror reported the attempt to Spring Lake Park police and was excused from the jury.

The FBI is investigating how the name was leaked and who was behind the bribery attempt; a conviction could carry a 10-year federal sentence. A second juror was excused Tuesday after hearing about the incident from a family member.

“We will investigate and prosecute that attack on our criminal justice system with all of our resources,” Thompson said Friday.

In a rare move, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sequestered the jurors for four nights until they reached a verdict. She also added security to the courtroom and confiscated defendants’ phones to investigate the leak of juror names.

Six men and six women sat on the jury, most of them from the Twin Cities area and ranging in age from 27 to 69. The panel received the case Monday night and started deliberating Tuesday on 41 counts. The jurors sat through a complicated trial that included about 135 hours of testimony and arguments over 24 days.

Sitting in for Brasel on Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz thanked jurors and acknowledged that they had participated in an unusually long and difficult case.

Prosecutors said Abdiaziz Farah was the scheme’s ringleader. . The Savage resident ran Empire Cuisine & Market, which enrolled in U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that reimburse schools, nonprofits and day-care centers for feeding low-income children after school or during the summer.

His attorneys, Ian and Andrew Birrell, didn’t return messages for comment. During the trial, they argued that Farah spent millions of dollars on food and could make money as a for-profit business.

Ismail, also of Savage, ran the business with him. His attorney, Patrick Cotter, argued in the trial that prosecutors painted the defendants with a broad brush of inaccurate allegations. He said his client was more focused on running the restaurant than the meal programs. Cotter said in a statement Friday that he will appeal the conviction.

“Our democracy depends on the promise of due process and vigorous vetting of the facts applied to the law by a citizen jury,” he said.

Shariff, who led a Bloomington cultural center that worked with defendants’ other entities to distribute meals, was the only defendant to testify and call witnesses. His attorney, Frederick Goetz, argued during the trial that the Burnsville resident only oversaw food logistics, not any financial paperwork.

Goetz said Friday that he will also appeal. “[Shariff] believes strongly what he did wasn’t a crime … and will continue to seek vindication,” he said.

Abdimajid Nur of Shakopee was accused of creating and submitting fake invoices. His attorney, Edward Sapone, didn’t return messages for comment but had argued in the trial that Nur, a Minnesota track star who is enlisted in the U.S. Army, had a minor role in meal programs.

Nur’s sister, Hayat Nur of Eden Prairie, was also accused of creating and submitting fake invoices. Her attorneys, Michael Brandt and Nicole Kettwick, declined to comment. During the trial, they argued that she played a small clerical role, did what her bosses asked and was swept up in allegations simply by association.

Prosecutors called witnesses from across the state who saw no or few meals served at the food sites, FBI agents and accountants who traced money to personal expenses — including lakefront property on Prior Lake and gold jewelry — and a former Feeding Our Future employee who testified about a “booming” fraud scheme of rampant kickbacks and bribes.

Defense attorneys said their clients served real food to real kids, but they said FBI investigators never searched some food sites. They argued that prosecutors assumed criminal intent of Somali immigrants, not understanding their culture of informal transactions based on trust and verbal agreements.

Inside the 13th floor courtroom overlooking downtown Minneapolis, the jury sat through usually long six-hour days filled with presentations of flowcharts, spreadsheets and reams of financial records. Besides a dizzying amount of data, the case also involved a complicated web of companies, nonprofits and individuals.

A date hasn’t yet been set for sentencing. None of the 18 people who have previously pleaded guilty in the broader case have been sentenced, but possible sentences range from about two years to nearly five years in prison.

The biggest indictment in the case involves Feeding Our Future executive director Aimee Bock and 13 other defendants tied to Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, the largest participant in the meal programs in the investigation.

In that case, one man pleaded guilty last year; another, Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, a former Feeding Our Future employee who is accused of taking kickbacks and creating fake meal sites with a man who pleaded guilty, fled the country.

Daly said Friday’s verdicts could prompt other defendants to take their case to trial, knowing there’s a chance of acquittal. But, he said, it’s going to be more difficult to find jurors who are impartial if they have heard about the attempted bribery and worry about their safety.

The case took an unusually long four days to find jurors who weren’t connected with or had strong opinions about a scandal that’s made headlines for more than two years. Brasel repeatedly reminded the 12 jurors and six alternates to avoid media coverage.

Prosecutors, who have said more charges will be filed, have seized more than $66 million in the case.

The verdicts delivered for each defendant were:

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah - Guilty on all counts but one Wire Fraud

Mohamed Jama Ismail - Guilty on all counts but Wire Fraud

Abdimajid Mohamed Nur - Guilty on all counts but three counts of money laundering

Said Shafii Farah - Not guilty on all counts

Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin - Not guilty on all counts

Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff - Guilty on four counts, not guilty on two counts.

Hayat Mohamed Nur - Guilty on three counts, not guilty on two counts

Staff writer Erin Adler contributed to this story.