MINNEAPOLIS – A Minneapolis man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for his role in the $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson
According to court documents, from September 2020 through January 2022, Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi, 35, claimed to be operating a child nutrition site in St. Paul, Minnesota. As part of the scheme, on or about September 4, 2020, Ghedi’s co-conspirator registered ASA Limited LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State. Four days later, Ghedi’s co-conspirator applied for ASA Limited to operate a purported food site in the Federal Children Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future at the Gurey Deli, a small market located in a St. Paul strip mall
Within just three weeks of creating the ASA Limited site, Ghedi and his co-conspirators falsely claimed to be serving meals to 2,000 or 3,000 children each day, seven days a week. During the one-year period from September 2020 to September 2021, Ghedi and his co-conspirators fraudulently claimed to have served more than 1.6 million meals at the ASA Limited site. To accomplish his scheme, the defendant and his co-conspirators prepared and submitted inflated meal counts, fabricated invoices, and fake attendance rosters of purported children…