The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota announced Tuesday that Asad Mohamed Abshir, 34, has pleaded guilty for his role in the Feeding Our Future scheme. Abshir is the 48th person to be convicted in the ongoing food fraud investigation.
According to authorities, Abshir and his brother fraudulently claimed they operated a food distribution site in Mankato that provided 1.6 million meals to children between 2020 and 2021. However, the brothers “did not provide the food they claimed to, and they were not entitled to the taxpayer dollars they received for their claims.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Abshir used the funds to purchase a 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 Denali truck. Additionally, authorities seized more than $420,000 from a bank account tied to a shell company Abshir operated. Both the truck and the seized funds will be forfeited to the federal government.
“This defendant laundered money meant to feed children and funneled it into a web of shell companies and luxury spending,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson. “As FBI Director Kash Patel recently said, this case stands as one of the most egregious abuses of public trust in recent memory. The people of Minnesota deserve better.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a since-dissolved nonprofit called Feeding Our Future ran a scheme that defrauded a federal child nutrition program of roughly $250 million. In short, the nonprofit partnered with vendors to fraudulently claim that they were providing meals to hungry children. The federal government issued reimbursements for those claims.
In many cases, vendors claimed they provided meals to children in numbers that were not mathematically possible.
Since the initial indictments in the Feeding Our Future scheme were handed down in 2022, more than 70 individuals have been charged for their alleged involvement in the scheme. The former leader of Feeding Our Future, Aimee Bock, was found guilty for her role in the operation earlier this year.
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Author: Luke Sprinkel
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