2 more people charged with conspiring to bribe Minnesota juror plead not guilty
MINNEAPOLIS -- Two of five people charged 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 pleaded not guilty Wednesday.Said Shafii Farah and Abdulkarim Shafii Farah were arraigned before U.S.
Magistrate Judge Tony Leung in Minneapolis.A third co-defendant already pleaded not guilty last week.
They 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.Leung ordered both men detained before trial, saying the crimes of which they are accused threaten foundational aspects of the judicial system.
“In my decades on the bench, I've not experienced an attempt at bribing a juror in such a precalculated and organized and executed way,” Leung said.“That to me goes to the heart of an attack on our judicial system, on the rule of law.”Attorneys for Said Farah and Abdulkarim Farah asked Leung to consider releasing them before trial with certain conditions, arguing the law sets no presumption of detention for the charges they face.
They also said both men had significant ties to the community that would prevent them from fleeing.Assistant U.S.
Attorney Joe Thompson said juror bribes are so rare as to be “nearly unprecedented.” He likened the five Minnesota defendants to John Gotti, the notorious mob boss at whose 1987 trial a juror was later found to have taken a cash bribe to help secure an acquittal.Leung said threatening the rule of law put the community at risk, and necessitated the detention of both men.
Court documents made public last week revealed 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 y...