If all goes according to plan this week, six (6) more guilty pleas will be recorded in the sprawling Feeding Our Future fraud case. The six are all close relatives of the lead defendant of a seven-member group, Ikram Yusuf Mohamed, a former Feeding employee, and include Ikram herself.
KARE-11’s Lou Raguse appears to have been the first to report on this major development in the case. Raguse writes,
Six fraud suspects say they will plead guilty this week in the Feeding our Future meal scam case. The seven on the indictment were all set to stand trial together in late April. They are a family, led by Ikram Mohamed, who allegedly recruited them all to take part and steal about $12 million in taxpayer money.
The seven were indicted back in January 2024 and made their first court appearances back in February 2024.
The only remaining holdout to pleading guilty appears to be Ikram’s brother, Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, a/k/a Gandi Abdi Kediye.
Collectively, they represent defendants Nos. 63 to 69 in the scandal. After the six guilty pleas are entered, they will represent convictions Nos. 58 to 63. A total of 79 defendants have been charged in the food scandal, so far.
Sentences will be handed down at a later date.
Ikram played a prominent role in the now-infamous December 2021 54-minute audio recording of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison meeting with a group of Feeding fraudsters. Ikram’s voice can be heard on the recording. Gandi (not present) later donated to Ellison’s re-election campaign.
All seven defendants will appear in federal court this week. Gandi will appear first on Wednesday morning (March 18) for a status conference on his now stand-alone case. He will be followed by Ikram’s guilty plea and the guilty plea of her husband, Shakur Abdinur Abdisalam.
On Friday, four more guilty pleas are scheduled in the courtroom of presiding Judge Nancy Brasel.
The trial for the seven, including Gandi, is still scheduled to begin on April 20.
