According to court records, the nonprofit Twin Cities and a network of business operators stole tens of millions of dollars in federal funds to help feed children in need while schools were closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, more than 200 agents from the FBI and other state and federal agencies raided more than a dozen locations, including Feeding Our Future’s St. Anthony office and director Aimee Bock’s Rosemount home.
The FBI alleges in a search warrant affidavit that Feeding Our Future, the state’s largest independent funder of federal food programs, filed false reimbursement reports and conspired with business owners who stole and laundered funds in a “massive fraud” involving shell companies, kickbacks and dozens of bank accounts.
“Companies and their owners have received tens of millions of dollars in federal funds to use in providing nutritious meals to underprivileged children and adults,” the FBI agent wrote. “Almost none of that money went to feeding the children. Instead, the participants in the scheme embezzled the money and used it to buy real estate, cars and other luxuries.”
No criminal charges were filed, and the FBI said it made no arrests on Thursday.
The Minnesota Department of Education made the decision Thursday to end Feeding Our Future as a sponsor and stop funding from the USDA Summer Food Program and Child and Adult Care Food Program.
The department also suspended reimbursement for a second sponsor, Partners in Nutrition, also known as Partners in Quality Care, based on information contained in the search warrants. Bock worked at Partners in Nutrition.
PANDEMIC RULES
The two federal food programs typically provide meals for children in need during the summer when schools are closed, as well as meals and snacks for children in childcare and after-school programs.
But early in the pandemic, with many schools closed to keep the virus under control, the USDA expanded eligibility for its food programs to allow restaurants to participate, authorize meals in higher income areas, and allow distribution of multi-day food packages to the public. . be eaten off site.
Meanwhile, many employees of the Minnesota Department of Education, which oversees food programs, have been ordered to work from home.
“According to MDE officials, this left the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse,” the FBI wrote.
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The Department of Education’s workload has increased dramatically as a result of new USDA regulations. He usually receives about 80 requests each year for new food sites. For the first half of 2021, 838 requests were received.
Worried about its inability to verify claims, the department prepared to drastically reduce the number of food distribution points last summer before relenting under pressure from hunger supporters.
Kickbacks, laundering
Bock’s Feeding Our Future has been a major beneficiary of USDA’s pandemic waivers.
Founded in 2017, the nonprofit received $3.5 million in food reimbursements in 2019, $42.7 million in 2020, and $197.9 million last year. The sponsor charged a 10 per cent administration fee on these refunds on contracts with facility operators, many of which were operated by members of the East African diaspora.
According to the FBI, several site operators barely spent that money on food for children.
The Feeding Our Future organization itself claimed to have several major distribution sites, but when the FBI agents arrived, they discovered that the parking lots were empty.
The warrants state that Feeding Our Future employees, as well as several business operators, set up shell companies that they used to hide the proceeds of the scheme.
The FBI also found evidence that Bok received a $310,000 kickback from one of the businesses and that her boyfriend, Empress Malcolm Watson Jr., set up his own front company to hide about $600,000 in federal money.
No one answered a call to the Feeding Our Future office on Friday, and a company lawyer did not answer a phone message.
ISK
Department of Education spokesperson Ashley Norris said the office reported Feeding Our Future’s activities to the USDA regional office and the inspector general when the nonprofit failed to explain and document its rapid growth in the summer of 2020.
Then, in November 2020, Feeding Our Future sued the Department of Education for taking too long to approve applications for dozens of new sites, alleging that the agency discriminated against minority-owned businesses and the families they serve.
A month later, the agency turned down dozens of sites claiming they had exceeded regulatory limits on the number of children served. He later declared the nonprofit “seriously insolvent”, turned down new applications to open new sites, and in March suspended Feeding Our Future payments while he worked to review refund claims.
Among its concerns, the department said that Feeding Our Future claims the maximum number of meals each month and that the department has received complaints that some registered sites do not serve meals.
Bock also managed massive amounts of money on her own, despite her “lack of formal financial experience or education,” the agency said in response to the lawsuit. “…It is unreasonable for a sponsor to have one person in charge of all operations and finances with an income of this level.”
PRE-TOUCH, INVESTIGATION
However, in April 2021, Ramsey County District Judge John Gutmann found the Department of Education in contempt of court for violating its agreement to quickly approve applications for new sites.
The department was ordered to pay the nonprofit $47,500; the case is still pending.
The same month, the Department of Education told the FBI that Feeding Our Future “provided forged documents in support of reimbursement in addition to artificially inflating the number of children and low-income individuals receiving benefits,” according to a search warrant.
When the FBI launched its investigation in May, it obtained bank records that it said “showed a massive fraud scheme” and “several companies that received suspiciously large refunds.”
SAFARI
The companies named in the warrants include the Safari Restaurant and the Minneapolis Events Center, which claimed to have served 5,000 meals a day, seven days a week in July 2020.
The FBI said Safari and related companies received more than $10 million in refunds and “almost nothing” was spent on kids’ food.
One of the owners, Salim Saeed, allegedly spent illegal funds to buy a $950,000 house in Plymouth with an indoor basketball court, while another owner, Abdulkadir Nur Salah, gave Bock a $310,000 kickback. The FBI claimed that Saeed and Ahmed Omar-Hashim spent $2.8 million on an office building in Minneapolis.
Others reportedly associated with the Safari group are Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, Abdirahman Ahmed, Sagal Aden, Hadith Yusuf Ahmed, Ahmed Artan, Ahmed Gedi, Abdinasir Abshir and Abdikadi Mohamud.
Feeding Our Future employees Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh and Hadith Yusuf Ahmed are suspected of setting up shell companies to hide money.
OTHER GROUPS
Others on the warrants include the ThinkTechAct, also known as the Mind Foundry Foundation, run by Mahad Ibrahim, who reportedly received more than $16 million last year after claiming to feed 160,666 children a day at 10 locations.
The FBI said “little, if any” of that money was spent on food for the children.
Instead, the FBI said most of the money was laundered through several businesses and their owners — Abdivahab Aftin, Mohamed Jamu Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Noor, and brothers Abdiaziz and Saeed Farah of Bushra Wholesalers and Empire Cuisine and Market — who later bought cars and real money. estate in Minnesota and Kenya.
ST. FLOOR SITE
The big player appears to have been S&S Catering, led by Qamar Ahmed Hassan. The FBI says S&S received $13.8 million in federal funds, either directly from sponsors Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition or other companies, but spent a small portion of that money on kids’ food.
His partners were the St. Paul Young Inventors Lab, led by Bekam Merdassa, which received $3.6 million in compensation last year; Academy of Youth Excellence, led by Sarah Mohamed Nour, which received $4.1 million; Guhaad Said’s Advance Youth Athletic Development, also known as Central Avenue Lofts, received $3.2 million; and Filsan Mumin Hassan Youth Higher Education, which received $1.4 million.
Mara H. Gottfried contributed to this report.