A Minnesota man whose nonprofits received $1.1 million in federal funds to serve meals to children became the 81st person indicted in connection to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme after prosecutors said he used the funds for personal purchases.

Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim, 54, was indicted in federal court last week on seven counts of what prosecutors allege was a scheme to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Two nonprofits he helped run — Bilaal Mosque Inc. and Multicultural Resource Center Inc. — claimed to deliver 40,000 meals to children per week for months.

Between March 2021 and February 2022, the nonprofits submitted over $1.2 million in reimbursement claims for the meals to Feeding Our Future, which sponsored its participation in a federal child nutrition program. Prosecutors said few of these meals were delivered and Ibrahim purposefully inflated the numbers to receive more money.

The indictment also listed three unnamed co-conspirators, though did identify one as Ibrahim’s son. Prosecutors said they helped falsify invoices, created sham companies to move around the money and made up fake rosters of children who never actually received food.

Prosecutors said Ibrahim used the fraudulent funds to enrich himself and his son. Among the alleged fraudulent transactions are a Chevrolet purchase, a money wire to Kenya to buy real estate and a $50,000 check Ibrahim wrote to himself from the Bilaal Mosque bank account.

Ibrahim is the 81st person to be indicted in the sprawling Feeding Our Future fraud probe, a $300 million pandemic relief scandal that came to light after an FBI investigation in 2022.

So far, 62 defendants have pleaded guilty and another seven have been convicted at trial. Aimee Bock, the group’s leader, was sentenced in May to 41 years in prison.

Ibrahim made his first appearance in court on Thursday. The same day, former Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey aide Abdi Nur Salah was sentenced to almost three years in prison for defrauding the government out of $1.6 million by falsely claiming to have served nearly 5 million meals to children.

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.