Prosecutors and a federal judge called out “unprecedented behavior” Friday related to the ongoing trials of suspects connected to the massive Feeding Our Future fraud investigation. 

Judge Tony Leung ruled that one suspect, Abdinasir Abshir, will now remain in jail pending his trial in August after prosecutors accused him of tampering with a witness in the separate trial of Feeding Our Future’s former executive director, Aimee Bock, and restaurant owner, Salim Said. 

The pair is accused of orchestrating what the government has called the largest pandemic fraud in the nation. 

Earlier this month, prosecutors alerted the court that Abshir approached a government witness as he was preparing to testify in Judge Nancy Brasel’s courtroom on the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Minneapolis. 

Abshir had remained out of custody on supervised release since he and several others were charged in September 2022. 

However, federal agents re-arrested him last week after the incident at the federal courthouse, where prosecutors say Abshir “stood over” the government witness as he was sitting on a bench outside the courtroom. 

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned the witness in question is Sharmake Jama, who testified a day later as part of an agreement to plead guilty to fraud. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson presented still images from security cameras that confirmed the contact – a violation of the terms of Abshir’s pretrial release. 

“The madness that this trial has become… is like something I’ve never experienced before,” Thompson told the court. “We have to have agents patrolling our hallways to make sure people like Mr. Abshir aren’t intimidating our witnesses.”

The incident is the latest in a series of events that include the attempted bribery of a juror in a previous trial connected to Feeding Our Future last year. 

“I’ve been a judge for 31 years,” Leung said Friday. “I’ve never seen anything close to this in Minnesota.”

In their arguments to keep Abshir locked up, prosecutors also shared that they found “a series” of assault weapons and ammunition inside the Park Avenue offices used by several suspects in Minneapolis connected to Feeding Our Future. 

Abshir’s attorney, Craig Cascarano, asked the court to consider placing his client on electronic monitoring or in a halfway house pending his trial this summer, but Judge Leung was not swayed.

“(It is) a direct attack on the integrity, advocacy and reliability of this nation’s justice system,” Leung said from the bench. “I don’t think this is a close call in this case.”

Prosecutors are expected to continue presenting their case in the trial of Bock and Said next week. 

Click here for KSTP’s full coverage of Feeding Our Future.