More guilty pleas in Feeding Our Future fraud scheme bring total up to 21
Federal prosecutors have now reached plea deals with 21 defendants charged in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
According to Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, three defendants — 34-year-old Haji Osman Salad, 42-year-old Khadra Abdi and 42-year-old Sharmarke Issa — all pleaded guilty this week to wire fraud for their roles in what has been called the “largest pandemic relief fraud scheme” in the country.
Salad owned Haji’s Kitchen LLC and enrolled in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future and another sponsor. The program is designed to fund free meals for children from low-income families.
Federal prosecutors say Salad, Abdi and Issa set up several meal sites around Minnesota and created shell companies “to facilitate the fraud scheme.”
Over a two-year period, Salad claimed he served more than 15 million meals to Federal Child Nutrition Program sites through Haji’s Kitchen, including sites run by Abdi and Issa. In one instance, he created false invoices claiming he supplied a site in Pelican Rapids — a town of 2,500 people — with almost $300,000 worth of food for 140,000 meals and snacks.
Salad received nearly $11.5 million in reimbursements while carrying out the scheme and spent those funds on real estate and luxury vehicles.
Issa, who ran the nonprofit Minnesota’s Somali Community and Wacan Restaurant, falsely claimed to have served 2.3 million meals and received $3.6 million in federal funds. He also ran shell companies used to launder the proceeds of the fraud scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Abdi was the principal of Shafi’i Tutoring & Homework Help Center, which he registered as a meal site under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship. He claimed $3.5 million in reimbursements for meals served to children, but “relatively little of this money was used by Abdi to purchase food,” prosecutors say.
Sentencing hearings for Salad, Issa and Abdi have yet to be scheduled.