Text messages flew furiously as the bribe was delivered. The defendants in the Feeding Our Future trial knew what was at stake.

“100 [thousand] for our freedom is nothing bro,” Abdiaziz Farah sent to his co-defendant Mukhtar Shariff, “worth trying everything bro.”

The attempted bribery was in response to the sprawling FBI investigation into the Minnesota non-profit that alleged more than $250 million in federal reimbursements were stolen and spent on luxury homes, cars and other lavish expenses, in what was one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States.

The United States Attorney’s Office detailed dozens of messages between several co-defendants on Monday as it filed a motion to supplement the presentence investigation report for Shariff. Shariff was convicted for his role in the fraud scandal, but has not been charged with bribing the juror.

“The government has learned that defendant Shariff knew about the bribery attempt and destroyed communications he had with his co-defendant Abdiaziz Farah about the bribe,” the motion reads.

As the seven-week trial was coming to a close, several of the defendants targeted a 23-year-old known as Juror 52 to deliver a bribe to try and secure a not guilty verdict. The Attorney’s Office said it was because they believed “she was the youngest juror and the only juror of color.”

One of the defendants, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, reached out to Ladan Mohamed Ali, a 31-year-old Seattle woman who prosecutors say he had a prior relationship with, to deliver the bribe. Nur and Farah conducted research on the juror and her family. They tasked others to conduct surveillance on her, photograph her home and put a tracking device on her car.

Ali flew from Seattle to Minneapolis to help. She then crafted a series of lies. She told Nur that Juror 52 agreed to the bribe and requested $500,000, both of which were not true.

An East Coast couple has been arrested and charged in Ramsey County with being part of a theft operation that is suspected of stealing roughly $1 million in goods across several states from the high-end women’s athletic wear retailer Lululemon.

Jadion Anthony Richards, 44, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 45, both of Danbury, Conn., were charged Friday in Ramsey County District Court with organized retail theft in connection with crimes that spanned more than two months until their arrests Thursday.

Both appeared in court Monday and remain jailed ahead of hearings scheduled for Dec. 16. Richards’ bail was set at $100,000 and Lawes-Richards’ at $30,000. Attorneys for each defendant were not immediately available to respond to the allegations.

The County Attorney’s Office said this the first case it has prosecuted under a state statute enacted into law in May 2023 that is aimed at addressing organized retail theft.

In a nod to the work of the Roseville Police Department and its new retail crime unit, as well as other law enforcement agencies, “these individuals accused of this massive retail theft operation have been caught,” read a statement from Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office. “We will do everything in our power to hold these defendants accountable, and continue to work with our law enforcement partners and retail merchants to put a stop to retail theft in our community.”

According to the charges:

A retail crime investigator learned from police in Roseville that Richards, Lawes-Richards and an unidentified accomplice stole 45 items worth nearly $5,000 on Wednesday from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.

Police in Woodbury caught up to Lawes-Richards and Richards at the Lululemon in Woodbury and arrested them. Richards declined to speak with law enforcement, and Lawes-Richards denied stealing anything from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.

With gray skies hinting of rain, more than a half dozen people set out Monday morning in St. Paul, wearing purple vests and donning trash buckets and pincher tools.

Most were homeless, or recently without shelter. They had instructions to clear out litter from several Green Line light rail stations and bus stops throughout the Capitol city.

They earn weekly paychecks working for the St. Paul nonprofit Listening House under a pilot program launched earlier this year called St. Paul Work Now. At first, clean-up teams fanned out in St. Paul, picking up trash in sidewalks, skyways and parks, and shoveling snow during the winter.

Now, the program has been expanded to include picking up litter at Metro Transit Green Line stations in St. Paul, including the Robert Street, Capitol/Rice Street, Western Avenue, Dale Street, Victoria Street, Hamline Avenue and Snelling Avenue stations.

“It puts money in the pockets of people who need it and it helps make the city a little cleaner,” said Molly Jalma, Listening House’s executive director. “It’s a very practical solution.”

Crews also clean A Line arterial bus rapid transit stops at Snelling and University avenues and bus stops near Listening House’s new headquarters at East 7th Street and Lafayette Road (formerly Red’s Savoy Pizza).

For Metro Transit, the clean-up crews are part of a broader plan to make public transportation more welcoming, especially after ridership plunged during the pandemic, giving rise to hybrid work. Cleaner stations, stops, buses and trains were incorporated into the agency’s Safety and Security Action Plan, a strategy designed to make passengers feel safer, especially now as more people return to the office.

“Everyone who travels and works on our system deserves to have an experience that is consistently safe, clean, and welcoming,” Metro Transit General Manager Lesley Kandaras said.