Said Farah Sentenced to 78 Months After $200,000 Became $120,000 on the Way to Juror 52

The cardboard box held $200,000. The Hallmark gift bag left at Juror 52’s house held $120,000. On Friday, a federal judge in St. Paul sentenced Said Shafii Farah, 44, to 78 months in prison for his part in gathering the money, and fined him $40,000.

Farah got the call at 11:03 p.m. on June 1, 2024. His brother Abdiaziz told him about the plan to bribe Juror 52 and asked for help gathering cash, according to the Justice Department’s account of the plea. By the next morning Farah had gathered a portion of the $200,000, and a former Feeding Our Future employee helped gather more. The Justice Department says some of the cash came from several people and from a hawala near the Karmel Mall in Minneapolis.

That afternoon, outside Farah’s business, Bushra Wholesalers, Farah and Abdiaziz handed Abdimajid Mohamed Nur the cardboard box with $200,000 inside. Nur met Ladan Ali in a parking lot in Bloomington and passed her the box, with instructions to meet Abdulkarim Farah near the juror’s house so he could record the delivery as proof. Ali had already told Nur a story that was not true. She said she had approached Juror 52 in a bar, and that the juror wanted $500,000 delivered at noon on Sunday, when she would be home alone. On the way, Ali kept $80,000 for herself and put the remaining $120,000 in the gift bag. Nur had promised her $150,000 for making the delivery.

Nur and Abdiaziz had found Juror 52 online and through her Facebook account, learning her address and details about her family. Nur gave Ali a photograph of the juror’s car and a map of the Jerry Haaf Memorial Parking Ramp where she parked during jury service. Ali tried to follow her home on May 31, after the first day of closing arguments. Abdulkarim Farah watched the juror’s house and sent the other conspirators a map of where she parked. On June 2 he drove to a Target store for a screwdriver. He removed the license plate from Ali’s rental car, drove her to the house at about 8:50 p.m., and recorded the delivery. Ali handed the bag to a relative of the juror and said more money would follow if Juror 52 voted to acquit.

Juror 52 was not home. When she returned and found the cash, she called the police at once, and the next morning the bribery attempt was discussed in open court and the defendants were ordered to hand over their phones. Farah deleted the delivery video he had received, and deleted incriminating text messages before handing his phone over, the Justice Department says. Abdulkarim deleted the Signal app from his phone that same day. Abdiaziz reset his phone to its factory settings. The juror was excused from the case, and deliberations began with an alternate in her place.

A note recovered from Nur’s phone, quoted in the indictment, told Juror 52 how to argue the other jurors around. It opened with an instruction in capital letters: “REMEMBER your vote will be NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS for all defendants.” The note said the government had targeted immigrants, had not investigated properly, and had followed the money instead of visiting the meal sites. It closed by telling her, “You alone can end this case.” Prosecutors said the conspirators had picked Juror 52 because she was 23. She was the youngest juror, and apparently the only person of color on the panel, according to FOX 9’s account of the prosecution’s statements. The criminal complaint says they bought a GPS device to install on her car to track her movements.

The bribe was aimed at the first Feeding Our Future trial. It had opened on April 22, 2024, before Judge Nancy Brasel, with seven defendants facing 41 charges. Prosecutors said the seven claimed 18.8 million meals for children and sought $49 million from the federal child nutrition program. The jury convicted five of them, including Abdiaziz, who was found guilty on 23 of 24 counts, and acquitted two: Farah and Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, who faced three counts. The wider scheme, prosecutors said, took more than $250 million, of which about $50 million had been recovered when the verdicts came in.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson called the bribery attempt “corruption stacked on corruption” and said the juror “stood strong and refused to be corrupted.” Judge Eric Tostrud, passing sentence, said, “It’s not overstating things at all to say that Juror 52 is a hero.” Thompson spoke about the system. The posts online spoke about the money, and about the call. One X user, Memes & Things, summed up the case in a single line: “The bribe was the only thing that stuck.” A thread praising Juror 52 ended: “You can’t buy a verdict. Some people just can’t be bought.”

Said Farah sentenced to 78 months is the third of the five bribery defendants to be sentenced, and the sentences have followed the jobs. Abdulkarim Farah drove Ali to the house and recorded the delivery. He received 57 months in March, at the high end of his guideline range, with a year of supervised release. Abdiaziz Farah led the scheme, prosecutors say. He received 120 months in July, to run after the 28-year fraud sentence he was already serving: 38 years in all. Said Farah’s 78 months sit at the top of a 63-to-78-month range, with credit for about two and a half years already spent in custody. The plea deals put Ali’s range at about four and a half to six years and Nur’s at five to six and a half. Both are due to be sentenced in November.

The sentence arrived as one item in a wider Justice Department announcement. Between September 30 and October 30, federal prosecutors in Minnesota charged, convicted or sentenced 13 defendants in cases involving nearly $83 million in intended losses, including about $29.1 million in newly charged cases. The department said it had issued more than 1,000 subpoenas and executed more than 40 warrants in Minnesota during 2026, and that 16 defendants had been convicted since a May takedown, with courts imposing about 550 months of prison time over about 110 days. Two days before Farah’s sentencing, Salim Ahmed Said received 360 months for his part in the Feeding Our Future fraud. Prosecutors proved he had claimed more than 3.9 million meals through his Safari Restaurant and facilitated more than $44 million in fraud proceeds.

Three properties in Minneapolis, valued at about $519,000, were named as defendants in a civil forfeiture action announced in the same Justice Department release, identified as purchased with proceeds of the fraud scheme. The forfeiture action names the properties themselves, not their owners, as defendants.