A Minneapolis man pleaded guilty to charges that he defrauded the federal government in the sprawling Feeding Our Future scam by falsely claiming to have served over 1 million meals to children at a meal site in exchange for payments that he instead used for a mansion, cars and credit cards purchases.
Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi, 35, entered the plea Thursday in U.S. District Court for Minnesota to charges of wire fraud and money laundering for his role in the scheme that defrauded a federal child nutrition program during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The charges allege Ghedi and his co-conspirators ran a food site in St. Paul through a company, ASA Limited LLC, that they registered with the Minnesota Secretary of State. Days later, the group applied for the entity to operate the meal site in St. Paul through the federal child nutrition program under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship.
Within three weeks of registering, Ghedi and his peers fraudulently claimed to serve 2,000 to 3,000 meals to children daily through inflated meal counts, fabricated invoices and fake attendance rosters for children. From September 2020 to September 2021, the group reported serving a total of 1.6 million meals at the site.
Federal prosecutors allege Ghedi concealed his fraudulently obtained proceeds through a shell company, in which he deposited more than $2 million from December 2020 to November 2021. Ghedi used $245,000 of the money toward motor vehicles, another $200,000 for credit cards and transferred approximately $560,000 to another shell company that later paid for a mansion in Minneapolis and the property next door. Feeding Our Future received nearly $400,000 in administrative fees by sponsoring ASA Limited LLC’s participation in the program.
In total, prosecutors said Ghedi and the co-conspirators swindled $7.2 million.
The properties and a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee will be forfeited to the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. Ghedi’s plea marks the 47th conviction in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
