Feeding our Future: Former deli owner guilty plea is 45th conviction in $250 million fraud

(FOX 9) - The former owner of Gurley Deli in Maplewood has pleaded guilty to his role in claiming to be feeding children, while stealing COVID-19 pandemic-era funds as part of the larger Feeding our Future fraud.

Feeding our Future 45th conviction

What we know:

Abdihakim Ali Ahmed has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for his role in the $250 million COVID-19 pandemic-era fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition programs.

According to court documents, under the sponsorship of Feeding our Future, Ahmed, 40, of Minneapolis, claimed to be operating a food nutrition site out of his deli located in a strip mall, from September 2020 through January 2022.

Documents say that Ahmed registered ASA Limited LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State, and submitted his application with Aimee Bock, Feeding Our Future’s executive director.

Within three weeks of creating the ASA Limited site, "Ahmed and his co-conspirators falsely claimed to be serving meals to 2,000 or 3,000 children each day, seven days a week," documents say.

From September 2020-2021, Ahmed claimed to have served more than 1.6 million meals at the location.

Last week, a jury found Aimee Bock guilty on all seven counts she faced, including charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and federal programs bribery.

Salim Said, the owner of another fraudulent meal site, was found guilty on all 21 counts he faced, including counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal programs bribery, and conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, along with four additional counts of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Following the plea, Ahmed is the 45th conviction tied to the scheme that ultimately stole $250 million from funding claims.

How it worked:

Prosecutors say that Ahmed submitted multiple fake attendance rosters that included both names and ages of attendees of an "after-school" program that was hosted at the location.

When examining the documents, investigators later determined that the lists of names and ages were on spreadsheets that contained "a formula that inserted a random number between seven and 17 in the age column for each ‘child’ on the list," according to court documents.

Feeding our Future funds

Dig deeper:

According to court documents, rather than using the funding on meals for children, Ahmed kept "hundreds of thousands of dollars to himself," including transferring fraud proceeds to a shell company, and purchasing the former location of Kelly’s 19th Hole — a bar and restaurant in Brooklyn Park. He also bought a 2022 Mini Cooper.

As part of the scheme, Ahmed was found to have also paid more than $49,000 in bribes and kickbacks to Abdikerm Eidleh, a Feeding Our Future employee, in exchange for sponsoring and facilitating participation in the Federal Child Nutrition Program, charges said.

In total, documents say that Ahmed and co-conspirators charged a total of $7.3 million in fraudulent Federal Child Nutrition Program claims through Feeding our Future.

What they're saying:

"I am proud of the unrelenting efforts of our prosecution team to hold the defendants — who engaged in a massive pay-to-play fraud scheme that exploited Minnesota and the Federal Child Nutrition Program — accountable," said Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick said in a statement.