Feeding Our Future: Defendant in custody over witness tampering and guilty plea #35
According to jail records, Abdinasir Abshir was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals on Friday and is being held in the Sherburne County jail.
Abshir made a brief appearance Monday in federal court in St. Paul where a judge ordered him held until a detention hearing can take place this Friday, February 28.
Abshir, aged 30, is Defendant No. 10 in the sprawling free-food scandal, part of the Safari Restaurant group of defendants.
Two of his co-defendants, Aimee Bock (Defendant No. 1) and Salim Said (No. 3), are currently on trial in Federal court in Minneapolis. Abshir is accused of approaching a prosecution witness in that court case, Sharmake Jama (Defendant No. 39, who has pled guilty), in the hallway outside the courtroom last week. Abshir reportedly invited Jama into the nearby restroom to discuss the finer points of the case, but Jama declined and then reported the encounter to his attorney.
Abshir himself was supposed to have stood trial beginning mid-April in the case, along with four other co-defendants. In an unrelated scheduling order issued last Friday, Ashir’s trial date was pushed back to August, with another group of defendants moved up to the April slot.
The April date will now be backfilled with Defendant Nos. 7, 9, and 12 of the Safari Restaurant group and No. 17, Mahad Ibrahim, a lone holdover from the Empire Cuisine group of defendants, who were tried in court last spring.
That same scheduling order indicates that the current Bock/Said trial is expected to last until mid-March. Two other groups of defendants have been given hard trial dates for September and October. A trial date for a last group of defendants has yet to be set.
After considering guilty pleas and fugitives, that accounts for all the remaining defendants in the case.
Speaking of guilty pleas, yesterday in Federal court, Najmo Ahmed (Defendant No. 62) pled guilty. She operated the Evergreen Grocery in Minneapolis along with her husband, who continues to be a fugitive from justice. Ahmed represents Guilty Plea No. 35 and now becomes the 40th person convicted in the case.
Ahmed, aged 35, admitted to a scheme that took over $4 million out of the free-food program, much of which was sent overseas. She pled guilty to one count of money laundering, which carries a recommended sentence of 1 to 3 years in prison (15-33 months), according to her plea agreement.
In some news from the ongoing Bock/Said trial, Lou Raguse of KARE-11 reports on testimony yesterday that ties Feeding Our Future’s CEO Aimee Bock directly to a kickback received in the scam.
The Bock/Said trial continues today.