Feeding Our Future fraud trials pushed back to 2025

In an order issued late last week, Federal District Judge Nancy Brasel rescheduled the upcoming trails for many of the remaining 40 or so Feeding Our Future defendants to dates throughout 2025.

But beforehand, the four remaining defendants in the Feeding Our Future bribery case are set for trial beginning mid-September 2024.

The six-week fraud trial window set to begin on November 4, 2024, for the five remaining defendants of the Haji Salad group is still a go.

Learning a lesson from the first trial, which featured seven (7) defendants and concluded last month, going forward, future trials will include no more than four (4) defendants at a time.

First up in 2025 is the block of defendants (Safari Restaurant) including the alleged ringleader, Aimee Bock. This group of 12 will be tried in three batches beginning in early February and running until May.

In between trials in April 2025, the court is expected to take up the case of Mahad Ibrahim, who was separated from his alleged co-conspirators in the just concluded trial.

Moving into the autumn of 2024, the remaining two defendants from the JigJiga group are scheduled for trial in September. The S&S catering group is scheduled for a mid-October to mid-November trial date.

The Jama family of Rochester will go on trial in December 2025.

Trial dates for the remaining defendants remain TBD. Buried in Footnote Four of the scheduling order is the revelation that the two defendants in the Evergreen Grocery group are fugitives from justice. By my count, that brings the total number of fugitives in the case to five, defendant Nos. 2, 32, 59, 61 and 62.