The first seven of 70 Minnesotans charged with defrauding taxpayers of a quarter of a billion dollars in pandemic food aid are standing trial Monday. Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, and Hayat Mohamed Nur are accused of taking money that was supposed to feed underprivileged children and allegedly spending it on property, cars, jewelry, and other luxury items.
Nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition are among the organizations implicated in a wider scandal. It draws in prominent figures in the Somali community, such as journalist Mohamed Muse Noor. Noor was caught trying to flee to Turkey from Chicago O’Hare Airport in 2022. Eighteen people have previously pleaded guilty.
“The defendants’ fraud, like an aggressive cancer, spread and grew,” prosecutors say of the case.
“By the time the defendants’ scheme was exposed in early 2022, they collectively claimed to have served over 18 million meals from 50 unique locations for which they fraudulently sought reimbursement of $49 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program,” they added.
Very few meals were served to children, prosecutors say. Defendants allegedly laundered the money through shell companies. They also engaged in passport fraud, taking kickbacks, and flipping houses with the money, among other abuses.
Like the Black Lives Matter movement, the Covid pandemic was a massive vehicle for fraud. China-linked tech firm Womply allegedly defrauded taxpayers of around $2 billion in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
