Gandi Mohamed, 45, is expected to plead guilty or enter a no-contest plea at a change-of-plea hearing scheduled for Thursday, making him the sixth member of his family to accept conviction in a scheme that prosecutors say siphoned $14 million from a federal child nutrition program. The hearing comes as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz face mounting scrutiny over their connections to the case and their scheduled testimony before Congress.
Court records indicate Mohamed may opt for a no-contest plea, which would allow him to accept conviction and sentencing without formally admitting guilt. Either way, the outcome adds another guilty plea to a fraud case that has become a political crisis for two of Minnesota's most prominent Democrats.
Fox News Digital reported that prosecutors allege the Mohamed family fraudulently claimed to be serving meals while pocketing the federal funds instead. Fox 9 Minneapolis confirmed that Mohamed would be the sixth family member to plead guilty in the scheme. Six members of one family, all convicted in the same fraud, and the state's top law enforcement officer met with them before any of it came to light in court.
That meeting took place in 2021, when Ellison sat down with members of Minnesota's Somali community. Members of the Mohamed family were present. At the time, President Joe Biden's Department of Justice had not indicted anyone in the case, and no convictions had been secured.
A recording from the meeting, cited in reporting on the scandal, captured one Somali community member laying out a political strategy in blunt terms. Ellison's response on the recording was two words: "That's right."
Ellison has pushed back against the implications. In an April 2025 op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune, and in statements to reporters, he framed the meeting as routine constituent engagement. Fox News Digital quoted him saying:
"I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn't know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them."
But the facts tell a more complicated story. Gandi Mohamed gave Ellison a maximum campaign donation of $2,500. Ellison returned that donation to the Department of Justice in 2025, years after the meeting and well after the fraud case had become public. A convicted participant in the fraud has claimed that both Walz and Ellison knew about the scheme, allegations both officials deny.
Both Walz and Ellison are set to testify before Congress on March 4. A photo caption in the Fox News Digital report placed Walz at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the U.S. Capitol Building on March 4, 2026, where the committee examined the alleged misuse of federal funds intended for Minnesota social services and Medicaid programs.
The scope of the scandal extends well beyond the Mohamed family's $14 million scheme. The headline figure attached to the broader Minnesota fraud investigation is $9 billion, a number that reflects allegations of widespread misuse across multiple state-administered federal programs. How the $14 million family case connects to that larger sum remains an open question, but the pattern of fraud and the political entanglements surrounding it have drawn sustained congressional attention.
A House Oversight report has alleged that Walz and Ellison were aware of billions in welfare fraud for years and punished whistleblowers rather than acting on the warnings. That finding, if accurate, transforms the scandal from a story about criminal defendants into a story about institutional failure at the highest levels of state government.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, told Fox News Digital that while the guilty pleas are welcome, they also represent a missed opportunity for public transparency. Glahn stated:
"It's good that he and his co-conspirators have all been convicted in the case, however, a courtroom trial would have been a useful exercise to show the public the scope and scale of the fraud."
He has a point. Plea deals resolve cases efficiently, but they also keep testimony, evidence, and cross-examination out of the public record. When the fraud involves taxpayer-funded programs meant to feed children, the public has a legitimate interest in seeing the full picture, not just the final disposition.
Republican congressional candidate Dalia al-Aqidi, who is running against Rep. Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis, offered a sharper critique. She told Fox News Digital that Ellison's conduct goes beyond negligence:
"Our Attorney General, Keith Ellison, is not only looking the other way but doing so after taking donations from these very fraudsters. This is a betrayal of every Minnesotan who trusted him with that office."
Al-Aqidi said voters in her district are "furious" and described the fraud as a direct harm to the people the programs were supposed to serve. She said she has rolled out a five-point plan to prevent fraud before it starts, and framed the issue in terms that go beyond partisan point-scoring:
"This isn't just about taxpayers, it's about people who really need food and housing. Preventing fraud isn't complicated, it just takes the political will to stop this type of abuse. It's clear that this scheme is being used to buy votes, and that has to stop."
The Justice Department has also subpoenaed Walz and other Minnesota Democrats as part of the broader investigation, a sign that federal prosecutors are looking well beyond the individual defendants who have already pleaded guilty.
Several questions hang over the case. The specific charges against Gandi Mohamed have not been detailed in available reporting. The court and jurisdiction handling his plea have not been named publicly. The exact evidentiary status of the 2021 recording, who made it, how it surfaced, and whether it has been entered into any legal proceeding, remains unclear.
Most important: what did Ellison and Walz actually know, and when did they know it? Ellison says he met strangers in good faith and learned later that some were criminals. That explanation may satisfy his supporters. It does not explain why a $2,500 donation from a fraud defendant sat in his campaign account until 2025, or why the state's top prosecutor appeared on a recording affirming political strategy from a community that included active participants in a federal fraud scheme.
Walz, for his part, has faced questions about his inability to account for billions in stolen funds during congressional testimony. The governor who oversaw the state agencies responsible for distributing these federal dollars now faces a Congress that wants answers he has struggled to provide.
Meanwhile, criminal referrals to the DOJ have been formally transmitted as the investigation widens beyond the defendants who have already pleaded out.
Six members of one family, all pleading guilty. A $14 million theft from a program designed to feed children. A state attorney general who met with the defendants, accepted their money, and now insists he knew nothing. A governor headed to Capitol Hill to explain how billions vanished on his watch.
The individual guilty pleas matter. But the larger failure, the one that allowed this to happen, allowed it to grow, and allowed the officials responsible for oversight to remain in office without consequence, matters more.
When the people in charge of catching fraud are the ones taking meetings and donations from the fraudsters, accountability isn't just overdue. It's the bare minimum.
