Sunday February 4, 2024
By Kelly Smith
The Diana E. Murphy United States Courthouse building in downtown Minneapolis. LEILA NAVIDI, STAR TRIBUNE
Hodo Abdi was charged Thursday with wire fraud, the 61st person to be charged or indicted.
A Burnsville grocery store owner has been charged with wire fraud — the 61st person to be charged or indicted in the sprawling Feeding Our Future meals fraud cases.
Hodo Ali Abdi, who owned Alif Halal LLC, was charged Thursday in federal court, the first person charged since last March.
Prosecutors said Abdi received nearly $1.3 million from the federal meals programs for needy children. The money came through her work as a food vendor to distribution sites and through her own meals program, prosecutors allege.
Prosecutors said she provided fake invoices for substantial amounts of food but distributed little to no food.
Her first court hearing is scheduled for April 11. A message left with her attorney wasn't immediately returned Friday.
In January 2022, the FBI raided Feeding Our Future, a St. Anthony nonprofit that oversaw hundreds of meal distribution sites in Minnesota. The operation is at the center of what prosecutors say is one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country, totaling more than $250 million.
The federal program reimburses schools and nonprofits for providing meals to low-income children after school and during the summer. According to court documents, Abdi's store was a food vendor for sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future and a St. Paul nonprofit.
Prosecutors said Abdi also operated a food site in Burnsville called All Somali Community of Worldwide Services, or B&B Program, which was registered as a nonprofit. Prosecutors said she received about $250,000 in federal reimbursements after claiming the program served 242,000 meals in less than six months.
The first charges in the Feeding Our Future cases were announced in September 2022. So far, 17 people have pleaded guilty. The first trials are slated to begin this spring.