First defendants in Feeding Our Future food-aid fraud scheduled to go on trial

The first trial in the sprawling Feeding Our Future child nutrition fraud case is set to begin next week, with federal prosecutors scheduled to try eight defendants over a two-month period.

Most of the defendants in the upcoming case are affiliated with Empire Cuisine and Market, a now-defunct Shakopee grocery and deli. The eight defendants are alleged to have collectively pocketed at least $40 million in federal food aid. They allegedly spent this money on lavish purchases, including Teslas, Porches, and even a mosque in Kentucky.

Federal prosecutors have described the $250 million food-aid scheme as the largest pandemic relief fraud in the country. So far 18 of 70 defendants linked to the case have pleaded guilty .

Aimee Bock, former head of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future at the center of many of the cases, is scheduled to go on trial along with 13 other defendants in the fall.

The alleged fraud involved sponsor organizations like Feeding Our Future receiving federal funds earmarked to feed underserved children through the Minnesota Department of Education. The sponsor organizations then distributed those funds to food vendors and food sites, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children.

Several organizations in the money chain reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did—or simply never served any meals at all—in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors. Those funds were then passed through various shell companies before allegedly being pocketed by the perpetrators, who used the money to buy cars, property, and other items.

A grocery, a charter school and shell companies

Defendants Abdiaziz Farah and Mohamed Jama Ismail, who are nephew and uncle, co-owned Empire Cuisine, and federal prosecutors allege that they used the business to pose as a food provider for several food sites engaged in the fraud. Empire Cuisine received more than $28 million in federal money between May 2020 and January 2022, according to the charges.

Mahad Ibrahim, another defendant in the coming trial, operated more than two dozen food sites, many of which listed Empire Cuisine as a food vendor, according to charges against him. Mahad’s food sites operated under his company ThinkTech Act, which also did business as Mind Foundry Foundation, and listed locations across the state, including the Twin Cities metro area, southern Minnesota cities like Owatonna and Faribault, and as far west as Willmar.

ThinkTech Act received nearly $21 million in federal food aid money working through two sponsors, Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care, according to the charges. The vast majority of this money came through Partners in Quality Care , which the federal charges refer to as “Sponsor A” but is identifiable from a separate lawsuit, search warrant affidavits, and a federal complaint filed in May 2022.

Mahad for a time served on the board of a Burnsville charter school that Abdiaziz co-founded. He also owned another company, MIB Holdings, which federal prosecutors describe as a shell company for laundering federal food aid money. MIB Holdings received federal money from Empire Cuisine and Empire Enterprises, another company Abdiaziz owned.

Abdimajid Nur is another defendant who will stand trial for this case. Prosecutors allege that he created a shell company, Nur Consulting, and laundered federal food aid money from Empire Cuisine and ThinkTech Act.

Abdiaziz’s brother, Said Farah, is another defendant. Said and defendant Abdiwahab Aftin owned Bushra Wholesalers, which federal prosecutors allege claimed to be a food vendor to food sites and laundered food aid money.

Abdimajid’s sister Hayat Nur is another defendant who federal prosecutors allege submitted fake meal counts and invoices purporting to document meals served at food sites.

Rounding out the defendants is Mukhtar Shariff , who served as CEO of Afrique Hospitality Group and allegedly used that company to launder federal food aid money.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota, which is prosecuting the case, didn’t return messages seeking comment for this story. Lawyers for the eight defendants either declined to comment or didn’t return messages seeking comment for this story.

Cases are not ‘open and shut’

The case against the eight defendants is very complex and will place a significant burden on the prosecutors to prove guilt, said Joseph Daly, a professor emeritus at Mitchell Hamline University who formerly defended criminal cases in state and federal court.

White-collar crimes are tough to prosecute, he said, because they’re not as dramatic and clearcut as “somebody sticking a gun in someone’s face.”

“None of these cases are open and shut,” Daly said.

For one, prosecutors will have to show documentation of all of the alleged fraud in the case, which will amount to displaying bookkeeping for jurors explaining how dollars were siphoned and spent. The process could get very tedious, Daly said, and challenging for prosecutors to keep jurors’ attention.

“There will be a lot of overheads showing numbers and bookkeeping,” Daly said.

This is compounded by the fact that there are multiple defendants. To convince the jury to find all of them guilty, prosecutors will have to prove they’re linked together in the crimes.

“They can’t just say, ‘Here’s a bunch of fraud, $40 million of it,’” said David Schultz, a professor who teaches state constitutional law at the University of Minnesota Law School and political science at Hamline University. “They’ll have to be able to tell a good story for each one of the defendants and connect them together.”

To add to the likely tedious nature of the trial, each witness called to testify could theoretically be cross-examined eight times, because there are eight defendants with their own defense teams, Daly said.

“The judge will try to make sure they’re not going over the exact same questions that the other defense lawyer asked, but each and every lawyer will have a shot at each witness,” he said.

But with all of that considered, Schultz said he’d rather be a prosecutor than a defense attorney on this case. Schultz points to how federal prosecutors have filed close to 2,000 exhibits in the trial—twice the amount proposed collectively by the eight defendants.

“If the government is bringing that many exhibits, that suggests they have a lot of information,” Schultz said. “The defense has a tougher case.”

It’s tough to predict how a trial dragging on long will impact the jury. On one hand, the difficulty of presenting this kind of complex case against multiple defendants could make it hard for them to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt, Daly said. Schultz added that he wouldn’t be surprised if the judge empanels extra jurors to try to avoid jury fatigue.

But on the other hand, jurors are coming into a widely publicized case where the defendants are accused of stealing millions of dollars meant for needy children. That could make it hard to find a truly impartial jury, he said.

“They can say they are open-minded, but the reality is this was money that was supposed to go to kids to feed them,” Daly said. “You’d think that would be a tough uphill battle for the defense.”

Because this is a federal trial, the judge will get to decide the jury, unlike state trials where the two sides can contest and weigh in on jury selection.

All of the defendants in the upcoming trial are East African, which Schultz said puts “enormous” pressure on the government to call a diverse jury. That’s hard to do on federal juries in Minnesota, where jurors are pulled from across the state, which is 83% white.

“If they come back with an all-white jury, and that all-white jury comes back with eight guilty pleas, that’s not going to look too good,” Schultz said.

Defense attorneys will have to make the decision of whether to put their defendant on the stand. Daly said this will likely only happen if federal prosecutors are putting on a good case and presenting enough evidence to tie them to the fraud.

“If the prosecution is lacking real proof of each and every element, a lot of times you tell them, ‘Look, don’t take the stand. They might be able to get in facts that they left out through you if you start testifying,’” Daly said. “‘Then I’ll argue on closing arguments that they missed this, they missed that, and they didn’t do this, and it was improper in proving the case.’”

That all goes to a main defensive tactic: to sow doubt and confusion in the jury over the government’s case.

Another common defense strategy in a case with multiple defendants is for one defendant to start pointing fingers at another defendant, he said.

“‘I didn’t do it, this is my uncle, he ran the whole operation, I just showed up,’” Daly said, mimicking a defendant testifying. “That’s what happened with the mafia; they started pointing fingers at each other every time they got accused of racketeering.”

The many defense attorneys in the trial will be simultaneously cooperating with and suspicious of each other.

“They’ll be working together, but they’ll be aware that one of these defense lawyers could turn on their client and blame him,” Daly said.

All of which makes a very adversarial system. “It’s like combat,” Daly said. “Civilized combat.”

Long trial likely

The federal district court blocked off all business days between April 23 and June 14 for the trial, and Daly expects it to last the entire time given the complexity of the case and number of defendants involved. Schultz said he could see the trial going even longer than it’s scheduled for.

Feeding Our Future defendants planning to go on trial in the future may also gain an advantage after the end of the first trial: They’ll get a window into seeing how the government might plan to prosecute them. Schultz said defense teams for defendants scheduled for future trials will likely send someone to the first trial to learn the federal prosecutors’ strategy.

“They’ll get to see how the prosecution lays out their case and their arguments and so forth,” Schultz said.

If any guilty convictions arise from the first trial, subsequent defendants could also use that to their advantage.

“Their argument can always be, ‘My client didn’t do anything wrong. So and so who was convicted already  is responsible for it,’” Schultz said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Abdimajid Nur and Said Farah as brothers. Court documents identify Abdiaziz Farah and Said Farah are brothers.

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