Someone Stole Her Bag and Left It With $120,000 Cash and the Promise of More if She Would Plead Guilty
ST. PAUL, MN— Seven people are accused of stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. On Monday, a jury said that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her house and offered her more money if she would vote to free them.
“This is out of this world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said in court on Monday. “This is incredibly rude behavior.” This sounds like something out of a mob movie.
Seven of the 70 people accused in a plot that cost taxpayers $250 million are about to go on trial. 18 others have pleaded guilty, and the government says they got back about $50 million in one of the biggest fraud cases in U.S. history that was related to the pandemic. Prosecutors say that only a small amount of the money was used to feed kids from low-income families. The rest was spent on expensive cars, jewelry, trips, and real estate.
The April trial began, and defense lawyers questioned the quality of the FBI’s probe. They also said that this might be more of a case of bad record-keeping than fraud, since the defendants were trying to keep up with the fast-changing rules for the food aid program.
These seven first defendants worked at a restaurant that took part in the food help program. Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding our Future, is still waiting to be tried. She has pleaded not guilty and denied any crime.
The 23-year-old juror said she gave the bag of cash to the cops right away. The woman left it with her father-in-law on Sunday with the message that she would get another bag of cash if she decided to not convict. This is what the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
The defense lawyer Andrew Birrell told the judge that the cash bag is “an accusation that bothers and upsets me.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel questioned the last 17 jurors and alternates before letting the trial go on with more closing statements on Monday. None of them said they had been contacted without permission. As a safety measure, Brasel chose to lock up the jury for the rest of the case.
Brasel said, “I don’t do it for fun.” “But I want to make sure the trial is fair.”
She didn’t decide right away if the suspects should be jailed, but she did tell an FBI agent to take their phones.
The aid money came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the state Department of Education was in charge of giving it out. Schools and other partners in the program were supposed to give kids food.
Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition were two of the groups involved. Before the pandemic, they were small charities, but in 2021, they each gave out about $200 million. The prosecutors say that they made bills for meals that were never served, ran fake businesses, moved money, faked passports, and took bribes.
