A juror was dismissed Monday after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and offered her more money if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. “This is completely beyond the pale,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said in court on Monday. During the trial that began in April, defense attorneys questioned the quality of the FBI's investigation and suggested that this might be more of a case of record-keeping problems than fraud as these defendants sought to keep up with rapidly changing rules for the food aid program.
I think the only downside to this is that if I had expendable cash already liquid so no paper trail, and I was a juror, and I wanted the defendant to get in even more trouble, I could claim the cash was a bribe and get it back with no risk. It would also make laundering money easier as any claim of bribery instantly cleans up the source of it. And if the designated grunt does his time and doesn’t talk, it never gets traced back to the source.