A lawsuit filed yesterday by the state attorney general against the nonprofit company Partners in Nutrition shines more light onto the larger free-food fraud scandal.
It’s known as the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, named after the nonprofit company of the same name. Think of “Partners in Nutrition” (PIN) as the junior partner in the 2020-21 fraud scandal. Back in February 2022, I published this table of large free-food nonprofits active in Minnesota:
As you see, Feeding Our Future took nearly $250 million out of the program, a number that has been repeated endlessly for the past four years. The St. Paul-based Partners in Nutrition, a/k/a Partners in Quality Care, billed only slightly less over the years.
Feeding Our Future gets all the publicity because its founder and CEO, Aimee Bock, was defendant No. 1 in the fraud case. Several of Bock’s employees (defendant Nos. 2, 46, and 62) were also indicted on felony fraud charges.
Less known is the role played by PIN. The company was also co-founded by Aimee Bock, who later left to found Feeding after a falling out with her then-business-partner, PIN CEO Kara Lomen.
Neither Lomen nor any of her employees have ever been charged in the case. However, more than twenty (20) of her vendors have and many have been convicted of fraud in the scandal.
The AG’s $18 million civil lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County court yesterday, focuses in large part on the role of PIN vendor Mahad Ibrahim. He is defendant No. 17 in the Feeding case. Ibrahim had been scheduled to stand trial with seven co-defendants back in 2024. At the last minute, he pulled out and later reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. He has yet to be sentenced in the case. The plea agreement calls for a prison sentence of 7 to 9 years.
[As a side note, it was Ibrahim’s corporate office in Edina that served as the location of that infamous December 2021 meeting between AG Keith Ellison and individuals associated with Feeding Our Future. Ibrahim himself was not in attendance.]
Because Ibrahim skipped trial, neither his nor Partners’ story has ever gotten a full airing in open court. Now it can be told.
Ibrahim enters the story on page 8, paragraph 36 of the lawsuit. The suit also notably mentions Feeding Our Future defendant Nos. 15, 18, 31, 32, 33, 34, 54, 55, 56, 58, and 59.
Paragraph 41 (p. 10) includes a table of Ibrahim’s food distribution sites under PIN. The largest of these was operated by Masjid As Sunnah, taking in more than $4 million. At the time, the executive director of As Sunnah was Abdirizak Diis, seen here on the left escorting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (now a candidate for U.S. Senate) around a Somali market in Minneapolis earlier this year,
Photo Credit: Somali TV of Minnesota
As Sunnah appears again later in the lawsuit (p. 14, para. 58). Both Diis and As Sunnah featured in exhibit lists for the first Feeding Our Future trial (2024). Neither has been charged in the case.
Page 36, paragraph 160 mentions PIN’s relationship with Ayan Abukar of Action for East African People (AFEAP). She is defendant No. 58 in the Feeding case and is shown here receiving an Outstanding Refugee award in 2021 from Gov. Tim Walz,
The lawsuit will apparently result in Partners returning to the U.S. Treasury the $18 million remaining in their corporate bank accounts.
Ellison says that he has referred someone for criminal prosecution. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday,
Ellison also is recommending that at least one person tied to the nonprofit face criminal prosecution, and Ellison may recommend additional criminal or civil charges against six others who worked for Partners. He declined to identify the individuals but said he’s referred the one individual to state and federal authorities.
Stay tuned, I guess.
