‘Minimal participant’ in Feeding Our Future fraud pleads guilty, will likely avoid jail

A 65-year-old Bloomington woman deemed a minor participant in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme pleaded guilty to money laundering on Thursday as prosecutors agreed not to seek jail time for her.

Farhiya Ahmed Mohamud entered the 21st guilty plea in the sprawling case while staving off a November trial that would have been the second Feeding Our Future case to go before a jury. She entered her plea a month after that of her son, Sharmarke Issa, who is ex-chair of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority board.

Mohamud was CEO of Dua Supplies & Distribution Inc., which claimed to be a food supplier but instead became a shell company that laundered millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained federal child nutrition program funds.

Mohamud on Thursday affirmed that payments to her company from Haji Osman Salad and Fahad Nur were for relatively small amounts of food and were instead primarily used to buy items such as real estate. Under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Ebert, Mohamud admitted that she did so under the direction of her son.

Mohamud pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering in exchange for all other charges to be dropped. The count to which she pleaded guilty involved a November 2021 wire transfer of about $184,308 from her Dua Supplies account used to buy a single-family home in Edina.

In September 2020, Mohamud also created Bubah Baraka Properties LLC and admitted Thursday that — also at the direction of her son — she used its bank account to buy real estate with money unlawfully acquired by other people. Specifically, Mohamud used that company to wire another $300,000 to purchase the Edina home a year later.

Although sentencing guidelines called for a prison sentence of between 18 and 24 months, both Mohamud’s attorney and the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to ask U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel to allow Mohamud to serve any punishment outside of prison.

Ebert pointed out that Mohamud was not herself involved in the scheme to defraud the federal food aid program and was not aware of the scheme her son and others were perpetrating.

Yet Mohamud replied “yes” when asked whether she agreed that she should have known by late summer 2021 that the “substantial amounts” of money she was receiving were coming from a criminal source.

“Part of the reason you should’ve known by that point is because you were actually not supplying them with these large amounts of food, is that right?” Ebert asked.

“Yes,” replied Mohamud, who also acknowledged that any legitimate food purchases had largely stopped by that point.

Mohamud kept “relatively minimal” amounts of the money sent her way by co-defendants and instead facilitated financial transactions with that money to benefit the others.

John Conard, Mohamud’s attorney, told reporters after Thursday’s hearing that his client was “willfully blind” in this case.

“It’s when you don’t have the knowledge to commit a crime, but you should have had it. And that was the basis of the plea and the extraordinary joint recommendation for no jail and you have probation,” Conard said. “She obviously feels a lot of shame having been caught up in this, just given her background and the values that she has.”

Brasel said Thursday that she would schedule a sentencing date for Mohamud upon completion of her presentence investigation. According to the plea agreement, Mohamud will owe any restitution amount determined at sentencing alongside her son, Issa, and their co-defendant Salad.

Prosecutors have called the Feeding Our Future case, which so far has 70 defendants charged in Minnesota, one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States. The defendants are charged with stealing more than $250 million from federal food programs that reimbursed nonprofits, schools and day cares for feeding low-income children.

Brasel delivered the first sentence in the case on Tuesday, imposing a 12-year prison term on Mohamed Jama Ismail after he was found guilty of conspiracy, money laundering and fraud charges in June.

The biggest indictment in the case involves Feeding Our Future executive director Aimee Bock and 13 other defendants tied to Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, the largest participant in the meal programs in the investigation.

Bock appeared in court Wednesday for a seven-minute hearing over an alleged violation of her pretrial release conditions. According to court documents, Bock took out a new line of credit for a $185,394 student loan this year that was not reported to or approved by the federal probation office. Brasel allowed her to remain out of jail pending trial under the same release conditions.