Two Feeding Our Future defendants plead guilty shortly before scheduled trial

Two of the Feeding Our Future defendants scheduled to face trial next week pleaded guilty at separate hearings Tuesday.

Abdulkadir Nur Salah and his brother Abdi Nur Salah faced a long list of charges for their roles in a $250 million scheme to defraud government child nutrition programs.

During a brief morning hearing in federal court, Abdulkadir pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Prosecutors agreed to drop 13 other counts.

Under the terms of his plea deal, Abdulkadir, 38, would serve between 9 and 11 1/4 years in prison, but the final decision on his sentence is up to U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel.

Abdulkadir — who co-owned the former Safari Restaurant on Lake Street — admitted that he made fraudulent reimbursement claims to the food programs for children in need during the pandemic.

The wire fraud count to which Abdulkadir pleaded guilty involves an email to Feeding Our Future, the defunct Twin Cities nonprofit at the center of the scheme, that included phony invoices totaling $4.2 million for 800,000 meals claimed to have been served over the course of a single month in November 2021.

Abdulkadir also agreed to pay $44,061,053 in restitution in conjunction with his co-defendants and must forfeit cash in several bank accounts as well as real estate that he purchased with stolen money in Minnesota and Ohio.

In a separate hearing Tuesday afternoon, Abdi Salah, 37, also pleaded guilty to a count of wire fraud in exchange for the dismissal of other charges. As a “minor participant” in the crime, he faces a recommended sentence of 21 to 27 months.

The men also face possible deportation. Like most of the defendants in the broader case, the Salah brothers are from Somalia. But unlike many of the others, they’re not U.S. citizens.

Abdi is a legal permanent resident, but Abdulkadir is in the U.S. illegally.

In December of 2021 — around the time he sent that email with the phony food invoices — Abdulkadir was fighting deportation. Prosecutors wrote in court filings that Abdulkadir failed to disclose millions in stolen money as income on his immigration paperwork. The defense countered that immigration evidence should be excluded because it could prejudice the jury.

The pleas mean that next week’s trial may not take as long, and it’s far less likely that the public will hear about the defendants’ connections to Minneapolis City Hall. 

When Abdi’s name first appeared in court documents in 2022, he was fired from his job as an aide to Mayor Jacob Frey.

Prosecutors wrote in court filings earlier this month that Abdi used his “political influence” to lobby politicians to pressure the Minnesota Department of Education not to shut down Feeding Our Future and the meal sites it sponsored. 

The government’s exhibit list includes two emails from 2020 from Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman to Abdi regarding Abdi’s nonprofit Stigma Free International and another from Abdi to Osman. The prosecutors’ long list of potential witnesses includes Frey — whom the government considered questioning about the city’s policy on outside employment. Prosecutors say Abdi failed to tell the city employers about his other income — which was from the fraud scheme. 

Neither Frey nor Osman has been accused of any wrongdoing. But in late 2023, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison shut down the nonprofit Urban Advantage Services, which Osman’s wife Ilo Amba set up allegedly to participate in the fraud scheme. Amba has not been charged.  

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday for the two remaining defendants who are set for trial, Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and Salim Ahmed Said. Said, 36, was co-owner of Safari Restaurant along with Abdulkadir Salah.

The brothers’ guilty pleas come on the heels of a sentencing hearing last week in which Brasel sent Mukhtar Shariff to federal prison for 17 1/2 years. In the first Feeding Our Future trial last year, a jury convicted Shariff and four other defendants and acquitted two others.

Since late 2022, prosecutors have filed charges against 70 people in the overall case. The Salahs are the 25th and 26th to plead guilty.

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