Feeding Our Future: Trial restrictions tighten after alleged witness tampering attempt
Sharmake Jama, who pleaded guilty in January, testified about participating in meal fraud at his family's Rochester restaurant.
He also told jurors of an attempt by another defendant, who is awaiting trial in April, to talk to him in a courthouse bathroom on Tuesday.
The judge issued an order that any defendant in related cases cannot be in the courtroom or even on the same floor.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Sharmake Jama testified that the claims that he fed nearly 3,000 children per day in 2020 and 2021 were fabricated.
He also said invoices showing he purchased food, at times hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time, were not true. In fact, he'd not seen them before he was arrested.
The invoice claiming he purchased $56,000 dollars worth of milk? He didn't. There's no way he could even store that much, he testified.
Big picture view
On Tuesday, as Jama sat outside the federal courtroom in Minneapolis, awaiting his turn on the stand, he says he was approached by another man that he recognized, but did not know.
Prosecutors said that man is another defendant who will be tried in April and is a relative of Salim Said.
Salim Said and Aimee Bock are on trial together for their roles in the $250 million dollar Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. Said ran a number of meal sites and also recruited others to open more meal sites. Bock, who ran Feeding Our Future, is accused of being the ringleader.
"He just said, 'Can we talk?'" testified Jama about the man who approached him. "'Talk to you where?' 'Talk to you in the bathroom.'"
Jama didn't, but told his lawyer, who then informed the judge.
What's next
On Wednesday morning, the judge issued an order that any defendant in a Feeding Our Future case can only attend this trial with a 24-hour notice, which is necessary to set up an overflow viewing area on a different floor. And those defendants are no longer allowed on the floor where the current trial is taking place at any time.
This comes after an attempt to bribe a juror in a Feeding Our Future trial of seven defendants in 2024. That juror promptly reported it to the court.
READ MORE: Feeding our Future: Juror bribery attempt leads to guilty plea
Dig deeper
Also on Wednesday, two witnesses from Willmar, who testified about a downtown meal site that Salim Said was a part of. One of them, who works at an insurance agency next door, said she never saw lines of kids or increased traffic.
"It would have been noticeable," she testified.
The site claimed to be feeding up to 3,000 kids every day, both breakfast and lunch.
"I just didn't see that kind of activity."
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