A man beat a federal fraud case, then joined a plot built around $120,000 in a Hallmark gift bag. Apparently, winning once was not enough.

That is the opening chapter of this week’s Dumb and Dumber: Scam Edition. It is not a typical consumer scam story. It is a story about trying to buy a juror’s vote in the middle of a federal trial, and how one juror’s integrity, an FBI investigation, and a trail of recovered messages turned a bizarre plan into another criminal case.

On Friday, October 30, 2026, U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud sentenced Said S. Farah, 44, to 78 months in prison, six and a half years, for conspiring to bribe a juror. MPR News reporter Matt Sepic’s account of the sentencing makes one point plain: Farah had been acquitted of fraud in the first Feeding Our Future trial, but later pleaded guilty to taking part in the separate jury-bribery scheme.

The timeline: a trial, an acquittal, and a gift bag

In 2024, Farah was one of seven defendants in the first Feeding Our Future fraud trial. The case concerned the alleged misuse of funds from federal child-nutrition programs. In June, a jury convicted five defendants and acquitted two, including Farah.

While closing arguments were underway, the bribery scheme unfolded. According to MPR News, Farah conspired with his brother Abdiaziz S. Farah, co-defendant Abdimajid M. Nur, and others to influence a juror identified in court as Juror 52. The plan involved $120,000 in cash and a promise of more if she voted to acquit.

The cash went into a Hallmark gift bag. Ladan M. Ali, who was then living in Seattle, delivered it to the juror’s home with Abdulkarim S. Farah, another brother. The juror was not home. Ali left the bag with the juror’s father-in-law and included a note promising more money for an acquittal vote.

Money recovered during the investigation. Image: Minnesota search-warrant evidence, via MPR News.

When Juror 52 returned and found the money, she called police. She did not entertain the offer, negotiate, or keep quiet. She reported it immediately. Police contacted the FBI, and the investigation led to charges against five people.

That response deserves more than a passing mention. At Farah’s sentencing, Judge Tostrud said juries are at the heart of the criminal justice system and that bribery in one case threatens the integrity of the whole system. He called Juror 52 “a hero” for turning down what he described as “life-changing money.” She protected the trial, and the public’s confidence in the process.

Deleted messages, recovered evidence, and a guilty plea

In November 2024, MPR News reported that the FBI recovered deleted text-message notifications connected to the bribery attempt. The reporting described a chaotic plan, including messages about gathering the cash and a video made to document the delivery. The juror never agreed to accept a bribe, and the delivery did not change her decision to contact police.

Farah later pleaded guilty to taking part in the jury-bribery scheme. On October 30, Judge Tostrud imposed the 78-month sentence. So the answer to “How does someone get acquitted and still end up in prison?” is straightforward: the prison term was for a separate crime.

The prior chapter in this series was different. On October 21, FOX 9’s Paul Blume reported that Muna Wais Fidhin, the 75th defendant tried in the case, was convicted on nine counts. Prosecutors said she billed the government approximately $1 million and claimed to serve more than 300,000 meals. That was a fraud conviction. Farah’s later sentence was for jury bribery. Separate chapter, separate conduct, separate consequences.

The legal distinction, and the perimeter lesson

Farah’s acquittal on the fraud charges still stands in the reporting available at the time of his sentencing. His six-and-a-half-year prison term was for the bribery conspiracy, not a reversal of the fraud verdict. In general, the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after an acquittal. But I am not going to turn a complex area of law into an absolute claim about every possible circumstance or how every tainted proceeding would be treated. The specific fact here is that Farah was sentenced for a separate offense after pleading guilty to it.

This is general legal commentary and reporting on public court records, not legal advice.

Now, the perimeter lesson. Greed can reopen a door that looked closed. A verdict is not permission to tamper with the process that produced it. Trust is not verification, access is not authorization, and familiarity is not proof. Having access to a juror’s address did not mean anyone had the right to use it for a criminal scheme.

And the people around the plot did not make it look smarter. Abdulkarim drove Ali to the juror’s home and recorded video as proof of delivery. Abdiaziz was sentenced in July 2026 to ten years for leading the bribery scheme, to be served after the 28 years imposed for his fraud conviction. Abdulkarim is serving nearly five years. At the time of MPR’s October 30 report, Ali and Abdimajid Nur were due to be sentenced in November.

Said Farah beat the fraud case and is serving time anyway, for the bribery scheme. His brother Abdiaziz is serving even more. The acquittal did not turn the gift-bag plan into a clever second act. It made the contrast sharper: a legal victory on one charge, followed by a guilty plea and prison sentence for another.

The win was not enough. That is the perimeter failure. Nobody stopped to ask whether this plan was lawful, defensible, or even remotely likely to work. They treated a juror’s home like an access point and a cash-filled greeting-card bag like a strategy. That is not confidence. It is reckless judgment dressed up as a plan.

We don’t confuse confidence with credibility, and we don’t fund anyone’s fantasy.

Sometimes people are just really stupid. “Stupid is as stupid does.”- Forrest Gump.

Thank you for reading and staying alert with me. For more from Dale’s Angels Inc., keep protecting your perimeter, and keep asking the questions that a gift bag full of cash cannot answer.