COVID-Related Fraud: Seattle woman pleads guilty to trying to bribe a juror
A Seattle woman has pleaded guilty on Thursday to attempting to bribe a Minnesota juror with a bag of $120,000 in cash in exchange for an acquittal in one of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud cases.
Ladan Mohamed Ali, 31, dropped off a cash bribe in a plan that involved tracking a juror to her home and promising more money if the woman agreed to return a not guilty verdict in the fraud case.
Ali is one of five people charged in the attempted bribery of the juror, a scheme prosecutors have described as “something out of a mob movie.” Officials have also said rare attempts to bribe jurors threaten foundational aspects of the judicial system.
Court documents revealed an extravagant scheme in which Ali and her co-defendants are accused of researching the juror’s personal information on social media, surveilling her, tracking her daily habits and buying a GPS device to install on her car.
The four others charged with crimes related to the bribe are Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Said Shafii Farah, Abdulkarim Shafii Farah and Abdimajid Mohamed Nur. Nur, 23, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery of a juror in July. The other three defendants have pleaded not guilty.
The group hatched the bribery plan in mid-May, records show.
