The wife and husband team of Mekfira and Abduljabar Hussein appeared at the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis this evening for sentencing in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. Both had previously pled guilty in the case.
Your correspondent was there. Federal district Judge Nancy Brasel presided over both hearings, held back-to-back.
Mekfira received a prison sentence of just under 5 years (57 months), at the top end of the sentencing guidelines, for her senior role in the fraud. She employed her pre-existing Shamsia Hopes nonprofit to perpetrate the fraud and she has been a prominent member of the local Oromo Ethiopian diaspora. Both of those factors appeared to work against her at sentencing.
Her husband, Abduljabar, received a prison sentence of just over three years (40 months), right in the middle of the guidelines for his level of culpability.
Both husband and wife were jointly ordered to return almost $9 million. Abduljabar was given credit for surrending some amount already, in the low hundreds of thousands. He came to court with a check for $76,000, the second defendant I’ve witnessed bringing a restitution check to his sentencing.
By my count, the Husseins received the 28th and 29th sentences handed down in the free-food scandal, so far:
