Feeding Our Future: 8th sentence handed down

Feeding Our Future defendant Zamzam Jama was sentenced this morning to six months in jail for her role in the free-food scandal. Prosecutors had requested a sentence of 16 months in prison.

She was one of six defendants from the extended Jama family, associated with the Brava Restaurant of Rochester.

The six were indicted back in September 2022. One of the group died of natural causes back in 2023.

All of the remaining Jama defendants have pled guilty and Zamzam is the first of the Jama group to be sentenced. I wrote about her guilty plea here a year ago. Under the term of her plea deal, the sentencing guidelines called for a jail sentence of between 10 and 16 months. She appears to have received a downward departure from Judge Nancy Brasel.

She owes restitution of more than $491,000 in the case, and she will spend a year on probation after her release from jail.

Jama is just the 8th defendant sentenced so far, out of the 63 who have been convicted in the case. The results to date:

The longest prison sentences have fallen on those who took their cases to trial (shown in bold) and lost.

Judge Brasel will have may more turns at bat, with three more Feeding Our Future sentencing hearings scheduled for just the next two weeks.