Federal prosecutors filed a motion yesterday to revoke the pre-trial release of Abdiwahab Ahmed Mohamud. He is Defendant No. 25, overall, in the sprawling free-food scandal.
Mohamud, now aged 35, is the last remaining defendant from the S&S Catering group. The group originally included eight defendants and seven have already pled guilty.
He is scheduled for a solo courtroom trial beginning on October 14, more than three years after his original indictment in the case.
An October 6 hearing has been scheduled on the Government’s request to take Mohamud into custody. As the Feeding Our Future case is classified as “white-collar” crime, very few of the 76 defendants have been held in custody, and then only for brief periods.
Prosecutors accuse Mohamud of witness tampering and obstruction of justice. In preparation for the imminent trial, prosecutors have been meeting with potential witnesses, and they report that,
One of those people, Conspirator A, is also a defendant in the Feeding Our Future scheme and is a charged conspirator of Mohamud. During that meeting, Conspirator A explained that Mohamud had attempted to prevent them from testifying at his upcoming trial.
Further,
At these meetings, as Conspirator A described it, Mohamud criticized
Conspirator A for having taken a plea deal in their own Feeding Our Future
prosecution. He told Conspirator A that Conspirator A is not a good person and that
they made a bad choice.
Witness tampering is a separate crime under federal law.
Last week, prosecutors filed a 16-page trial brief in the fraud case. Mohamud is charged with 7 counts and is accused of personally taking $4 million out of the free-food program through his Academy for Youth Excellence (AYE) nonprofit. The money laundering charge includes his purchase of a retail/office building on East Lake Street.
Mohamud’s AYE site was one of 21 Feeding Our Future locations registered along a 2-mile stretch of Lake Street in south Minneapolis.
The October 14 trial would be the third courtroom trial held in the case.
