Judge revokes pretrial release of Feeding Our Future defendant after witness tampering allegations
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A judge on Friday revoked the pretrial release of a Feeding Our Future defendant for allegedly trying to intimidate a witness.
Abdinasir Abshir is scheduled to go on trial later this year for his alleged role in a $250 million conspiracy to defraud taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic.
Last week, during the ongoing trial of Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and restaurant owner Salim Said, Abshir allegedly approached cooperating defendant Sharmake Jama, who was in a courthouse hallway waiting to testify, and asked to speak with him in a bathroom.
Jama refused the request and alerted his attorney.
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At a hearing Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Tony Leung said Abshir’s actions were “a direct attack on the integrity, efficacy, and reliability of this nation’s justice system” and ordered him to remain jailed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said that the allegations were particularly troubling in light of the attempted bribery of a juror at the first Feeding Our Future trial in June.
“This is an organized crime case. That’s what this case has become,” Thompson told Leung. “Every step of the way defendants have flouted the rules and have showed brazen disrespect for the criminal justice system.”
At the hearing, Thompson revealed that the FBI found “a series of AK-47 assault rifles” during the search of a mansion on Park Avenue in Minneapolis that Said and other defendants allegedly purchased with fraud proceeds and used as their headquarters.
Thompson said that Abshir regularly visited the building where the guns were found, and that many witnesses have been afraid to testify over concerns about their personal safety.
Because it’s a white collar case, the 70 Feeding Our Future defendants have largely remained free pending trial and sentencing. Defense attorney Craig Cascarano argued that jailing Abshir would be like “killing an ant with a sledgehammer.”
Cascarano added that if this were not a Feeding Our Future case, “there would have been no motion to revoke the conditions of his release without evidence of what the purpose of the contact was.”
In addition to attempting to speak with a witness, Thompson also said Abshir violated another condition of his pretrial release by failing to inform his probation officer of a change in his address. When agents went to arrest Abshir at the Lakeville home he had given the court, Thompson said that they found that Abshir had moved out and another family was living there.
