Rep. Omar Is Center Stage in Massive Minnesota Fraud Scandal for Her Support of Abused Programs

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was at the forefront of expanding federal funding for pandemic-era food and childcare programs. Those programs are now at the center of fraud allegations among the Somali immigrant community in her home state. 

Omar, who represents a congressional district with a sizable Somali population in Minneapolis, championed the MEALS Act in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and offered an amendment that would allow the federal government the ability to grant waivers to state governments for increased costs. 

Omar introduced the Act with the goal of removing oversight barriers to the expansion of federally funded state meals programs amid the school closures of the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation allowed the Department of Agriculture to waive requirements, including for increased federal costs. 

Omar’s MEALS Act opened the door to fraudsters

It was because of these waivers that Minnesota is now facing scrutiny for allegedly mismanaging federal funds, including by distributions to the “Feeding Our Future” program, which is linked to fraudulent activity by more than 70 defendants. Federal prosecutors say this particular scheme cost taxpayers $250 million after defendants allegedly appropriated the meals program funding for personal use or to send overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Despite the controversy, Omar doubled down on her prior support for the MEALS Act. When asked whether she regretted that vote in light of the prosecutions, she said: “Absolutely not, it did help feed kids.”

“The largest pandemic-era fraud identified”: Garland

The Justice Department first charged 47 people in a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit in 2022, Just the News previously reported. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said the defendants “went to great lengths to exploit a program designed to feed underserved children in Minnesota amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, fraudulently diverting millions of dollars designated for the program for their own personal gain.” 

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who served during the Biden administration, called it the largest pandemic-era fraud scheme ever identified. 

But the alleged fraud targeting the meals program is only part of the rampant fraud impacting Minnesota’s welfare system, with its genesis in the Somali immigrant community there. The New York Times reported last month that the fraud likely totals more than $1 billion in misused taxpayer funds.

In 2021, two men were named in a search warrant related to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme: Ahmed Ghedi and Abdihakim Ahmed, associates of Safari Restaurant and Event Center. Both men donated a total of $5,400 to Omar’s congressional campaign. Omar also held her 2018 congressional victory party at the restaurant. 

Both men later pleaded guilty to charges related to the fraud. Omar’s chief of staff told the local Sahan Journal that her campaign used that money to donate to local food shelves after the fraud was made known.  

Former Omar campaign staffers plead guilty

Additionally, a former associate of Omar’s campaign, Guhaad Hashi Said, pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development, where he claimed to have served 5,000 meals a day but pocketed $3.2 million from the food program, Just the News previously reported.

Alpha News reported that Said worked for Omar’s campaigns in 2018 and 2020 “overseeing voter mobilization as an ‘enforcer.’”  

Scrutiny in Minnesota again vaulted to the forefront shortly after the Christmas holiday when a viral video appeared to show empty daycare centers in Minneapolis that were recipients of state grants. The online video, released by conservative independent reporter Nick Shirley, shows in-person visits to several licensed childcare centers in Minneapolis. 

In a visit to one of the facilities that has garnered the most attention, Shirley’s footage shows no children or visible activity at the location despite records indicating it is supposed to serve nearly 100 children and has received millions of dollars in state support, Just the News reported. The facility, on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, stood out further because of a sign that misspells “Learning” as “Learing.” 

The son of the facility owner pushed back on Shirley’s video, claiming that the independent journalist’s visit came before business hours for the daycare to open for the day. 

“Do you go to a coffee shop at 11 p.m. and say, ‘Hey, they’re not working’?” Ibrahim Ali, who claimed he was the facility manager, argued in a statement to The New York Post. He further told the Post that there were 16 kids inside the daycare center on Monday when he was interviewed. 

However, one local told the outlet that “We’ve never seen kids go in there until today.

“That parking lot is empty all the time, and I was under the impression that place is permanently closed,” the person told the Post. 

Tikki Brown, commissioner of the new Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, also pushed back on the accusations of rampant fraud, but said the department would take concerns of fraud seriously. 

“While we have questions about some of the methods that were used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,” she said. “There have been ongoing investigations with several of those centers. None of those investigations uncovered findings of fraud.” 

Open, not open, then open again

Despite the kids flowing into the Quality Learning Center on Monday, Brown said that the facility had reportedly closed for good last week. A spokesperson for the Minnesota DCYF later told Newsweek that they learned on December 19 that the daycare had closed, but after following up later, learned on December 29 that the daycare decided to remain open. 

Omar has long called for increasing federal funding for such daycare services managed by individual states. She proposes universal pre-K, childcare subsidies for low-income families, and universal school meals, according to her campaign website.  

Walz was warned in 2024

State auditors warned Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in February 2024 that his team did not have adequate protections for the taxpayer money it was sending out the door to nonprofit groups and workers, more than two years after the first charges in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme were filed. 

The auditors found “pervasive noncompliance” inside the Walz administration with grant management policies that were “signaling systemic issues regarding grants oversight.” Specifically highlighting the meals program, the auditors said that the Minnesota Department of Education “should take additional steps to verify information provided in support of sponsorship applications submitted by high-risk applicants.” 

Walz defended his administration, saying there was no state employee “implicated” in the wrongdoing. “There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should have,” said Walz, according to MPR News.

More investigations to come

Later that year, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Walz’s state had lost $430 million by overpaying unemployment benefits during the pandemic. While it had a lower percentage of improper payments than many other states, the sizable total loss alarmed some members of the State Legislature, especially Republicans.

The widespread concerns of fraud prompted the House Oversight Committee to launch an investigation earlier this month into Walz’s management of federally funded state benefit programs, primarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said his probe would focus on what he described as “widespread fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs under Governor Tim Walz’s watch, the state’s efforts to cover it up, and retaliation against whistleblowers who sought to protect taxpayer dollars.” 

The committee sent letters to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, seeking “documents, communications, and records as part of the Committee’s investigation,” according to a press release. Those letters demanded that Walz and Ellison had until December 17, 2025, to provide the requested information to the Oversight Committee. 

The committee set a December 17 deadline for responses. It is unclear whether Walz replied to the committee in time. Ellison sent a letter to Comer on that date stating his commitment to investigate fraud and turning over some of the data the committee requested, but also said that other data, especially about ongoing fraud investigations, is “privileged” and “non-public.

Last week, Comer announced that his committee would be expanding its probe into the possible fraud in Minnesota’s social programs, including probing whether the state attempted to cover up the fraud scheme and/or retaliate against whistle-blowers who exposed problems in the taxpayer-funded programs, Just the News reported.

Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a Research Analyst for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a two-time graduate of Florida State University with a Masters in Political Science and a B.S. in International Affairs. 

Reprinted with permission from Just The News by Steven Richards.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.