Anwar Ahmed Adow, age 25, became the first defendant to plead guilty in the Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) fraud case. He appeared yesterday in federal court in downtown St. Paul to enter his plea.
Adow was one of eight defendants charged last month with defrauding the largely useless Medicaid program, operated by the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS), before it was shut down.
His guilty plea was expected as he had earlier waived his right to a grand jury indictment. His brother, Asad, has been charged separately in the case.
The Feds accuse Anwar of taking $1.2 million out of the HSS program. His ride of choice is a 2023 Mercedes-Benz CLA.
Anwar was charged with four counts of wire fraud, which spanned the period from March 2022 to April 2025.. He pled guilty to one count yesterday. No sentencing date has been set, as of yet.
Asad is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on November 17.
In other fraud news, a November 5 date has been set for the sentencing of Feeding Our Future defendant No. 38, Khadar Jigre Adan. Now aged 62, Adan was part of the three-man JigJiga group of defendants, based out of a commercial building on Lake Street in south Minneapolis.
I profiled Adan last month when he became the 55th defendant convicted in the sprawling free-food scandal. He pled guilty to one count of theft of government property. He will be just the 6th defendant sentenced in the case, so far, out of 57 convictions.
According to court filings in his case, it looks like Adan will be getting off easy, with no prison time and just a $1,000 fine. As is standard with such things, Adan’s defense lawyer painted a picture of an early life of unrelenting woe for his man.
Hailing originally from the city of JigJiga in Ethiopia, Adan rose to become a city councilman there. Political repression followed and he fled, first to Kenya, and then to the United States in 1999. He became a naturalized citizen in 2005.
Over the years, Adan has been a generous benefactor, not in America of course, but back home in his native Ethiopia where he reportedly donated food, a well, and a community center.
The scene of the admitted fraud, Adan’s JigJiga Business Center, is assessed at a market value of $2,526,000, according to county property records.
