Minneapolis Council Member Jamal Osman's wife in middle of fresh state charity accusations

The Minnesota Attorney General's Office has accused the wife of Minneapolis City Council Member Jamal Osman of creating a "sham" charity created to enrich herself and family members by diverting taxpayer funds meant to help feed children during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ilo Amba, Osman's wife, has not been charged with any crimes, but a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Attorney General Keith Ellison doesn't mince words in seeking to shut down a nonprofit, Urban Advantage Services, which was established by Amba:

"Urban Advantage Services ("UAS") is a Minnesota nonprofit that was created by Ilo Amba for the purpose of directing funds to herself, her family members, and her co-conspirators in a scheme that the federal government has described as 'an egregious plot to steal public funds meant to care for children,'" the lawsuit reads.

That "egregious plot" is the adjacent scandal surrounding Feeding Our Future, a charity at the center of a federal criminal allegations filed in 2022 that local charities fraudulently claimed some $250 million in COVID relief reimbursements for serving meals to children. Federal authorities say most of the meals or the children they claimed to serve them to weren't real.

Urban Advantage was paid $461,533 in federal reimbursements in 2020 and 2021, according to records from the Minnesota Department of Education, which administers the program.

Approached multiple times Thursday, Osman declined to comment.

The lawsuit comes with political ramifications for Osman, who was first elected to the City Council in a 2020 special election to fill the vacant Sixth Ward seat.

Early voting has been underway for weeks in the Sixth Ward, where Osman is running for re-election and facing spirited challenges from candidates who had previously criticized Osman for his ties to the scandal. They pounced on the news Thursday.

"The voters of Ward Six have a clear decision to make in November," said Tiger Worku, one of Osman's challengers. "It's not about simply agreeing with voters on the issues. But it is also about carrying yourself in an ethically and morally acceptable way."

Candidate Kayseh Magan, a former Medicaid fraud investigator in Ellison's office, called for Osman to resign.

"I also call on those who have endorsed him to do the right thing and call for his resignation," Magan said.

Also running in the Sixth Ward race is Guy Gaskin. "I'm not surprised," Gaskin said Thursday, adding that he didn't want to comment further before reading the lawsuit.

Ellison has endorsed Osman in the election. That endorsement remained on Osman's campaign website Thursday afternoon, although a post touting the endorsement on Osman's campaign account on X, former known as Twitter, appears to have been removed. Ellison could not be reached for comment about the endorsement Thursday.

Wednesday's state lawsuit by civil charity regulators seeks to shut down 23 nonprofits, some of which dealt directly with Feeding our Future, and some, like Urban Advantage, that did not.

The lawsuit addresses the lack of criminal charges against Amba head-on. It reads: "Although UAS and Amba are not named in the indictment, UAS's participation in the fraudulent scheme can be inferred from the timing of its incorporation, the lack of legitimate nonprofit activities, the nonresponse to the AGO's [Attorney General Office's] interrogatories, and the timing of its dissolution and closure of its bank accounts. Indeed, UAS was named as one of the organizations whose CACFP [federal Child and Adult Care Food Program] contracts were terminated by MDE [Minnesota Department of Education] just after the criminal indictments were filed."

The ties of Osman and his wife to the federal probe were known last year. Urban Advantage isn't the only nonprofit implicated in the scandal to which the couple has connections.

Osman and Amba were listed among four people who in 2019 incorporated Stigma-Free International Inc., an organization that has been accused of misappropriating millions of dollars through the federal program and was also targeted in a state lawsuit Wednesday. Osman told the Star Tribune in March 2022 that he "gave up" his role in the nonprofit in 2020, before Stigma-Free became active in the meals program, and had never heard of Feeding Our Future.

Staff writer Kelly Smith contributed to this report.