Minneapolis Man Pleads Guilty; Forty-Seventh Conviction in the Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme

MINNEAPOLIS – A Minneapolis man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for his role in the $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson

According to court documents, from September 2020 through January 2022, Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi, 35, claimed to be operating a child nutrition site in St. Paul, Minnesota.  As part of the scheme, on or about September 4, 2020, Ghedi’s co-conspirator registered ASA Limited LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State.  Four days later, Ghedi’s co-conspirator applied for ASA Limited to operate a purported food site in the Federal Children Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future at the Gurey Deli, a small market located in a St. Paul strip mall

Within just three weeks of creating the ASA Limited site, Ghedi and his co-conspirators falsely claimed to be serving meals to 2,000 or 3,000 children each day, seven days a week.  During the one-year period from September 2020 to September 2021, Ghedi and his co-conspirators fraudulently claimed to have served more than 1.6 million meals at the ASA Limited site.  To accomplish his scheme, the defendant and his co-conspirators prepared and submitted inflated meal counts, fabricated invoices, and fake attendance rosters of purported children.

According to court documents, rather than use fraudulently obtained money to serve meals or feed children, Ghedi and his co-conspirators fraudulently misappropriated much of it. Ghedi used a shell entity he created, AG Limited LLC, to hide and disguise the source and ownership of his portion of the fraud proceeds. Between December 2020 and November 2021, Ghedi deposited more than $2 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds into AG Limited LLC bank accounts. Ghedi used this money to purchase more than $245,000 in motor vehicles and to fund more than $200,000 in credit card spending. Ghedi also transferred approximately $560,000 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds to Cosmopolitan Business Properties LLC—another shell he co-owned with other co-conspirators—toward the purchase of a mansion and adjoining property located at 2722 and 2742 Park Avenue South in Minneapolis, which will be now forfeited to the United States along with a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

According to court documents, Ghedi paid $5,000 in kickbacks to Abdikerm Eidleh, a Feeding Our Future employee, in exchange for sponsoring and facilitating ASA Limited’s fraudulent participation in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. ASA Limited, of which the defendant was a co-owner, paid Eidleh an additional $49,000 in kickbacks. Feeding Our Future received nearly $400,000 in administrative fees for sponsoring ASA Limited’s participation in the program.

In total, Ghedi and his co-conspirators caused a loss of $7.2 million to Federal Child Nutrition Programs based on fraudulent claims submitted through Feeding Our Future.

Ghedi pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court before Judge Nancy E. Brasel. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.

The case is the result of an investigation by the FBI, IRS – Criminal Investigations, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew S. Ebert, Harry M. Jacobs, and Daniel W. Bobier are prosecuting the case.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Baune is handling the seizure and forfeiture of assets