MINNEAPOLIS — Ten more people face federal charges stemming from the $250 million Feeding Our Future pandemic meal fraud case, bringing the total number of defendants to 70.
A federal judge unsealed two indictments Monday charging nine people with crimes including wire fraud, federal programs bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit those crimes. A 10th suspect was charged via "information," meaning that person has already agreed to plead guilty in an April hearing.
One of the defendants is Said Ereg, owner and operator of Evergreen Grocery and Deli in south Minneapolis -- and his wife, Najo Ahmed.
The couple enrolled Evergreen as a distribution site in the Federal Child Nutrition Program in April 2020, making it responsible for serving meals and providing food to children, according to the indictment. The charges allege that they submitted meal count sheets claiming to have served thousands of meals that month, even before receiving official enrollment.
Ereg and Ahmed are accused of receiving $4.2 million in reimbursement payments from their sponsor, the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future.
The couple transferred much of the money to their own accounts to make luxury purchases and then transferred millions of dollars to foreign textile and trading companies, according to the indictment.
A Feeding Our Future employee, Abdikerm Eidleh, received $100,000 in kickbacks in exchange for sponsoring Evergreen Grocery, the charges said.
In the other indictment, seven people are charged with conspiring together -- Ikram Mohamed, Suleman Mohamed, Aisha Hussein, Sahra Osman, Shakur Abdisalam, and Fadumo Yusef.
Those suspects are accused of creating corporations to register as food sites and send money to each other in an attempt to launder it.
For example, Suleman Mohamed registered Star Distribution in Feb. 2021 and operated it as a "sham food vendor" for sites set up by his co-defendants and family members, according to the indictment. Over the next 14 months, Star Distribution received $10 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds while allegedly providing fraudulent invoices claiming to sell food to their family members' companies.
The defendants are expected to make their first court appearances on Tuesday.