75th Feeding Our Future fraud defendant convicted

In court yesterday, in federal court again, covering the Feeding Our Future, another, the 75th person charged in the Feeding Our Future case. She was charged a year ago, went on trial by herself, a couple of weeks in court, but very short deliberation before, was at nine counts and nine guilty verdicts? Yeah, nine total counts, wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, Muna Afdeen, she's out a savage, had a Burnsville business, a cafe, where she was supposedly running a meal site. It does appear she did serve some meals, distributed some food, but was accused of getting caught up in the Feeding Our Future scheme when they were supposed to be feeding hungry mouths, hungry children during the pandemic. She's found guilty on all nine charges. She billed the government for about $1 million, got away with about $550,000, dollars, money that went to a mortgage or a Lexus SUV, tens of thousands of dollars wired overseas, took the jury less than three hours- Pretty quick. Yeah, and the one other interesting note, because I was with you middle of the day and we were kind of getting towards the jury deliberations under three hours. But what I found really interesting is right afterwards, the government did seek to have her detained. She's been out on release, pending sentencing. They wanted her to remain in custody. It was kind of a stunning move because she has been law abiding since she's gotten into trouble. But the judge sent her home on electronic monitoring. Judge saying that even though you're convicted on nine counts, it's not a mandatory prison crime. I know people have asked about why aren't all these people going to prison? Why aren't they going to jail right away? But Judge Brazel said in releasing her again, she'll be monitored closely for the time being. But it's not a mandatory prison sentence. Eventually, she'll decide at sentencing. But for now, Muna Afdeen is allowed to go home and live her life. She has three young children, as it was reported in court, but she is guilty. And this was only the third trial, I think, in Feeding Our Future. So many are pleading guilty, but this defendant wanted to take it to a jury and she lost. Yeah, I've covered two of the trials. So yeah, it does sound right that this would be the third. There was another that was set to go to trial last year that then didn't at the very end there was a plea deal. I think part of the quick deliberation here, the evidence that the government presents is pretty much the same in all these cases. They have volumes of meal count records and emails and bank transactions. And you add that to the fact that there have been convictions and then there have been dozens of plea deals, guilty pleas in this case. And so the jury's not supposed to think about those things, but you think that that's probably also maybe in their mind, that there's been so many either guilty verdicts or pleas in this, and here's somebody facing the same evidence. Well, when you think about the backdrop that she would go into court at this time, even if voir dire and jury selection weeds out people who have opinions, who've read stuff about Feeding Our Future. I didn't sit in on jury selection, So I don't know the question we're asked, but think about being bombarded with the fraud ads in politics right now. I would think it's a very difficult time for any defendant to go into a courtroom right now and fight a fraud charge where there are allegations of money spent on homes, on money spent on luxury cars, on money being wired overseas, on children being ripped off, taxpayers being ripped off. I think no matter who you are, it would be a hard time to get in front of a jury right now making an argument. We did see a lot of the other guilty pleas, plea deals in some of the other defendants coming after the other jury verdicts of guilt too, where they see that and think I'm facing the same, essentially the same case and there's been, so I'm gonna take a plea deal. And to your point, there are three guilty pleaded defendants, fraudsters, people who have pled guilty, testified against Mouda Fadine. They came in. I told you yesterday I wasn't in court throughout, but obviously I picked it up during closing arguments. These three people came in, testified about the scheme, about what these checks meant, about how they cheated the roll calls, the rosters, the submissions. So while the defense tried to argue that they were just doing it to save their own hide and get a lesser sentence, they haven't been sentenced yet. they are cooperating. But in the end, I would also think hearing from those type of people to say the scheme, and then it matches perfectly with what the government is laying out against his original business owner, boom. Tough to overcome for a defendant, yeah. So guilty, guilty, guilty, nine counts yesterday. Okay, well, you got a lot going on. Thanks, Paul, appreciate it.