One of the orchestrators of the Feeding Our Future scam, the massive fraud that stole a quarter of a billion dollars in pandemic food assistance money in Minnesota, has been captured — in Somalia.
The arrest of Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh underscored the connection between the scam and the Somali immigration community, which was at the center of the fraud.
Prosecutors said the FBI tracked Mr. Eidleh to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, where he was taken into custody on Thursday, nearly four years after he was first charged in the U.S.
“Eidleh’s capture shows that, if you commit fraud against the American taxpayer, and try hiding across the globe, the long arm of justice will find you,” said Daniel Rosen, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota who will prosecute the case.
Details on the actual arrest were scant.
Mr. Eidleh, 42, was part of the initial indictment in September 2022 that stunned the nation with the scope of the fraud.
Authorities said he was an employee of Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit that collected pandemic assistance and doled it out to businesses to provide meals to kids who were out of school because of the shutdowns and were missing out on the free school meals.
Few meals were actually delivered, though.
As detailed in myriad court cases, the businesses signed up, claimed they were providing the meals, got paid, then paid kickbacks to Feeding Our Future.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who led the investigation until he left the Justice Department earlier this year, told Minnesota Public Radio that Mr. Eidleh left the U.S. in late 2021, just before the FBI raided Feeding Our Future.
“It’s an extraordinary effort to locate and effectuate the arrest of someone in a foreign country, even more so in a country like Somalia, which does not have an organized federal government, does not have robust federal law enforcement like we do here in the United States,” Mr. Thompson told the outlet.
Seventy-nine people have been charged in the scam, and almost all of them are part of the Somali community.
That drew President Trump’s attention last year, and helped spark the massive — and controversial — immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis.
One exception to the Somali dominance is Aimee Bock, who ran Feeding Our Future and was Mr. Eidleh’s boss.
She was sentenced last month to 42 years in prison.
Ms. Bock, in her defense, argued that top state officials were aware of what she was doing and turned a blind eye.
Mr. Eidleh’s name appeared second, below Bock, in the original 2022 indictment.
That indictment accused Mr. Eidleh of signing up businesses and collecting kickbacks. It also said he ran his own meals site, falsely claiming to have fed thousands of children a day and filing fake invoices to get paid $5 million.
