09/25/2024

Three Plead Guilty to Wire Fraud in $250 Million Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme

US Attorney's Office District of Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS – Haji Osman Salad, Sharmarke Issa, and Khadra Abdi pleaded guilty to their roles in the $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally-funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced United States Attorney Andrew M. Luger.

According to court documents, Salad, 34, the owner and operator of Haji’s Kitchen LLC, enrolled in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future and Sponsor A. Salad and his co-conspirators, including Issa, 42, and Abdi, 42, opened sites across the state of Minnesota, as well as multiple shell companies, which were used to facilitate the fraud scheme.

Between June 2020 through 2022, Salad falsely claimed that Haji’s Kitchen was a food vendor for more than 15 million meals to various Federal Child Nutrition Program sites in Minnesota. Co-defendants, Issa and Kawsar Jama were among the largest recipients of purported food from Salad. For example, in November 2021, Salad created fraudulent food invoices falsely claiming that he supplied Kawsar Jama’s Pelican Rapids site, a small town in west-central Minnesota with a population of approximately 2,500 people, with $293,300 worth of food for 140,000 meals and snacks. In total, Salad fraudulently received approximately $11,483,827 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds, which he spent on real estate and luxury vehicles.