Two women have admitted in Minnesota federal court to fraudulently stealing large amounts of money from government social services programs, with one of them netting more than $5 million in ill-gotten gains.
Fahima Egeh Mahamud pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court to wire fraud and conspiring to defraud the U.S. by collecting $4.6 million from false claims for her child care center, Future Leaders Early Learning Center, and receiving about $850,000 through the federal child nutrition program by turning in false or inflated invoices.
Future Leaders Early Learning Center operated in south Minneapolis as a meal site under Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the largest pandemic-era fraud in the U.S.
About the time in February when Mahamud, 50, of Edina, was charged in connection with the food fraud investigation, she was arrested while trying to board a flight to London.
Before the pandemic, Future Leaders Early Learning Center provided a “modest” number of meals through the program, typically filing claims of about $10,000 per month, according to an FBI affidavit.
However, in December 2020, the claims “ballooned,” the affidavit noted. At one point, the day care claimed to serve 1,000 children per day. By February 2021, the daycare claimed to serve nearly 60,000 meals per month.
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