A Minnesota judge sent two men to prison for pocketing millions in COVID relief funds through a fake child nutrition site, part of the sprawling $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud that has now produced dozens of convictions.
Ahmed Ghedi drew more than five years behind bars. Abdihakim Ahmed got four and a half. A federal judge handed down both sentences Wednesday after finding the pair helped run a fraudulent operation that claimed to feed thousands of children daily in the Twin Cities area but instead funneled taxpayer money into cars, real estate, and cash payoffs to a Feeding Our Future employee, Fox News reported.
The judge also ordered Ghedi to pay $2,862,451 in restitution and Ahmed to pay $2,242,590, money the two men and their associates siphoned from $7.3 million in COVID relief funds earmarked for the program.
Feeding Our Future operated out of St. Anthony, a small city just north of Minneapolis. On paper, the nonprofit ran a federally funded child nutrition program. In practice, prosecutors told the court, it functioned as a "cash pipeline" built on fake distribution sites, fabricated lists of children, and kickbacks.
Ghedi and Ahmed were two cogs in a much larger machine. The pair received a combined $7.3 million in COVID relief money that was supposed to put food in front of kids. Instead, they used the cash to buy a car, purchase property, and pay off a Feeding Our Future employee, a pattern prosecutors said ran throughout the organization.
The FBI raided Feeding Our Future's St. Anthony offices in January 2022. Eight months later, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger stood at a podium in Minneapolis and announced charges against the nonprofit's director and 46 other defendants. The investigation has since produced convictions of dozens of people tied to the scheme.
That scheme did not happen in a vacuum. A House Oversight report has accused Minnesota's own political leadership, Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, of ignoring billions in welfare fraud across the state, raising hard questions about how a quarter-billion-dollar scam grew so large before federal authorities stepped in.
The ringleader, Aimee Bock, was sentenced in May to nearly 42 years in prison after her conviction for orchestrating the full $250 million fraud. At sentencing, Bock addressed the court directly.
"I understand I failed. I failed the public, my family, everyone."
Bock's sentence dwarfs those given to Ghedi and Ahmed, but all three cases underscore the same reality: pandemic relief programs designed to help vulnerable children became open vaults for criminals willing to forge a few documents. The USDA funds that Feeding Our Future exploited were meant to flow through federally funded child nutrition programs. Instead, the FBI says, the money was laundered through an array of shell entities and spent on real estate, luxury cars, and personal enrichment.
Not every defendant has faced justice. The FBI added alleged fraudster Fahad Mohamed Nur, accused of stealing $5 million from a kids' meal program, to its Most Wanted list. As we previously reported, the bureau is now offering a $150,000 reward for information leading to Nur's capture.
Feeding Our Future is the largest single case, but it is not an outlier in Minnesota. The state has become a recurring dateline for federal fraud prosecutions tied to pandemic-era relief programs and public benefit systems.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley drew national attention, and more than 100 million views, by documenting suspected fraud in Minnesota's daycare subsidy programs, work that was later vindicated by a guilty plea in one of the cases he investigated.
Separately, a Minnesota man once honored as an "outstanding refugee" now faces Medicaid fraud charges tied to a sex-trafficking ring, yet another case in which public funds meant for vulnerable populations allegedly ended up in criminal hands, as we have reported.
The Trump administration responded to the breadth of the problem last winter by surging federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The FBI has also launched a broader initiative, a new Most Wanted Fraudsters list, aimed at tracking down defendants who stole from programs designed to serve children and the poor.
Ghedi's five-year sentence and Ahmed's four-and-a-half-year term will strike many taxpayers as modest given the scale of the fraud. Together, the two men are on the hook for roughly $5.1 million in restitution, a fraction of the $7.3 million they received, and a rounding error against the $250 million Bock's operation stole overall.
Whether restitution orders of that size ever get collected is an open question. Federal courts can order repayment, but recovering millions from defendants who spent the money on depreciating assets and cash handoffs is a different matter entirely.
The broader investigation continues. Dozens have been convicted, at least one fugitive remains on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and prosecutors have made clear they intend to keep working through the web of defendants who turned a children's meal program into a personal ATM.
When the government hands out billions on the honor system, the dishonest line up first, and the children who were supposed to eat never see a dime.
