I do not think this has already been mentioned.
Up in Minnesota, 7 Defendants are on trial for stealing $41 million from the government “Feed the Children” program. This was just the first group to be tried in a massive fraud ring. There are 70 defendants total charged with stealing $250 million.
This trial is almost done with closing arguments and the jury was to get the case this week.
On Sunday night a woman shows up at a jurors home and asks for the juror by name. She was not home, so the woman drops off a gift bag loaded with cash. She tells the jurors father that there will be another bag of cash if the juror votes to acquit the defendants. She leaves and a little later the juror arrives home. They open the bag and find $120,000 in cash.
The juror she tried to bribe is 23 years old and the only “person of color” on the jury. It seems they made some bad assumptions about this young lady. She calls the local police to report it and they bring in the federal authorities.
The next day in Court the prosecutor informs the Judge what happened and someone notices that one of the defendants breaks out his phone and starts texting. The Judge immediately orders the defendants to surrender their cell phones and then orders all 7 of them to be jailed until the trial is over. She questioned all of the jurors individually to see if they were approached by anyone (none had) and then sequestered the jury until the trial is over.
18 of the defendants have already plead out, and I bet there may be a few more that will try to follow suit. It will be interesting to see what they do about the tampering case. Hopefully we will see felony criminal charges against every person involved.
Up in Minnesota, 7 Defendants are on trial for stealing $41 million from the government “Feed the Children” program. This was just the first group to be tried in a massive fraud ring. There are 70 defendants total charged with stealing $250 million.
This trial is almost done with closing arguments and the jury was to get the case this week.
On Sunday night a woman shows up at a jurors home and asks for the juror by name. She was not home, so the woman drops off a gift bag loaded with cash. She tells the jurors father that there will be another bag of cash if the juror votes to acquit the defendants. She leaves and a little later the juror arrives home. They open the bag and find $120,000 in cash.
The juror she tried to bribe is 23 years old and the only “person of color” on the jury. It seems they made some bad assumptions about this young lady. She calls the local police to report it and they bring in the federal authorities.
The next day in Court the prosecutor informs the Judge what happened and someone notices that one of the defendants breaks out his phone and starts texting. The Judge immediately orders the defendants to surrender their cell phones and then orders all 7 of them to be jailed until the trial is over. She questioned all of the jurors individually to see if they were approached by anyone (none had) and then sequestered the jury until the trial is over.
18 of the defendants have already plead out, and I bet there may be a few more that will try to follow suit. It will be interesting to see what they do about the tampering case. Hopefully we will see felony criminal charges against every person involved.
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