Feeding Our Future prosecutors publish bribery text messages

Yesterday, prosecutors filed a 9-page document in federal court which included text messages sent by defendants in support of the alleged bribery effort in the first Feeding Our Future fraud trial.

The occasion was the upcoming (but not yet scheduled) sentencing of Defendant No. 21 in the case, Mukhtar Shariff.

Shariff was convicted on multiple counts in the fraud trial and prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 21 years in prison. He has not been charged in the bribery case and presumably did not take an active role in that effort.

The document indicates that Shariff knew of the bribery plot and took steps to delete evidence of his knowledge from his phone. The government was able to retrieve inbound messages from the Signal app.

The details are salacious enough that several local outlets covered the story: KARE-11, MPR News, Star Tribune.

This latest revelation does call attention to the fact that more than five months after the end of the fraud trial only of the five defendants convicted has been sentenced. Not one of the 23 defendants who have pled guilty in other cases over the years has been sentenced as of yet.

Another detail that caught my eye was the apparent ability of the alleged bribery conspirators to pull together $200,000 in cash over a weekend (Saturday to Sunday) with the apparent confidence that they could produce an additional $100,000 in cash on that Monday.

In related news, it turns out that Defendant No. 34/Guilty Plea No. 19, Sharmarke Issa, failed a drug test earlier this month. Prosecutors are recommending that he enter rehab.

Ahmed Ali, Defendant No. 37, has requested permission to travel to Ethiopia and Somalia from January to March 2025 to care for an ailing brother.

As the world turns…