Uber, Lyft drivers sue advocacy organization that pushed for wage hikes in Minneapolis, allege fraud

The rideshare drivers’ nonprofit that made waves in Minneapolis in their push for higher compensation from Uber and Lyft has been fracturing from within, with disagreements over leadership and finances revealed in a lawsuit detailing accusations of fraud against its leader.

Six drivers are behind the lawsuit, which targets Eid Ali, the public face of the battle that stretched over more than a year from Minneapolis City Hall to the State Capitol.

Four of them are board members of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association, who say Ali tried to jettison them from their positions after they attempted to review MULDA’s corporate books. The Minnesota Reformer first reported the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, rideshare drivers Farhan Badel, Mohamed Bulle, Mustafa Abdile, Ahmed Mohamed, Ahmed Igale and Dawit Kassa started organizing with other drivers in the summer of 2022 in a parking area of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport over concerns about their pay, which was lower than the minimum wage prescribed by cities like Minneapolis. That led to the formation of a drivers committee and the selection of Eid Ali, who said he had organized taxi drivers in the past, as leader.

Ali had the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association incorporated as a nonprofit and started collecting “membership” fees of $200 apiece from drivers. Within a month MULDA had collected more than $60,000 from drivers who wanted to back the organization’s efforts to pass legislation to increase their pay, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs allege Ali later incorporated two other nonprofits, “MULDA-RC” and “MULDA,” without their knowledge, and changed the articles of incorporation of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association to say it would have no members, although Ali continued to accept online payments from the public.

The suit claims that Ali’s creation of three different nonprofits based on the increasingly prominent advocacy organization — as well as an associate of Ali’s incorporation of a “MuldaActionFund, P.A.” — confused drivers and made them concerned about how the organization was being run. Those drivers created a competing organization called “Mulda Members.”

The board of Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association named Bulle, Abdile, Mohamed and Kassa as members in December 2023. The plaintiffs felt that their appointments were made as gestures of increasing accountability, according to the suit, but that they were kept in the dark about the nonprofit’s operations.

In May, the Legislature approved, and Gov. Tim Walz signed into law, minimum pay standards for rideshare drivers. The statewide standards overrode rules approved by the Minneapolis City Council that prompted Uber and Lyft to threaten to shut down service.

Following that, Ali tried to unilaterally remove the four new members from the board at a meeting for which they were texted insufficient notice, according to the suit. Later, they were denied requests to inspect new bylaws and accounting records created by the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association.

The plaintiffs are asking for a District Court order on the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association to produce the records requested and damages, and a temporary restraining order to prevent Ali from removing them from the board.

A person who answered MULDA’s phone asked the Minnesota Star Tribune to send an email for comment, but did not immediately respond. Ali could not be reached for comment.