Man Pleads Guilty In Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme Connected to Fake Willmar Meal Site

(KNSI) – A Minneapolis man pleaded guilty this week for his role in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud.

Prosecutors allege that 33-year-old Abdikadir Ainashe Mohamud, who goes by AK, claimed to be operating a child nutrition site in Willmar. As head of the organization Stigma-Free Willmar, AK bribed the owner of FaaFan restaurant to allow it to be listed as a meal location serving 3,000 children a day.

Mohamud then created another shell company named Tunyar Trading and represented it as the meal vendor for the site. AK and others created fake meal counts, invoices, and attendance rosters that they submitted to the Federal Child Nutrition Program. Over thirteen months, Tunyar fabricated 1.6 million meals to kids in a city of barely 20,000.

Mohamud enriched himself and others by pulling out $2.5 million from Tunyar Trading. Over $1 million was transferred to another fictitious business, Five A’s Projects LLC. Mohamud used it to buy a restaurant in Brooklyn Park named Kelly’s 19th Hole.

The scheme helped enrich senior members of Feeding Our Future too. The organization got $500,000 in administrative fees for registering the Willmar location. A senior employee, Abdikerm Eidleh, was held out as site support manager and received $225,000 in kickbacks from Mohamud. He also donated $5,750 to a GoFundMe that benefited Aimee Bock.

Stigma-Free International received about $5.3 million in federal funds in total. The plea agreement is forcing Mohamud to give up the restaurant and return $378,207.20 still stashed in the Tunyar Trading checking account.

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