24th guilty plea scheduled in Feeding Our Future case
Lots of Feeding Our Future news to report this week. Ayan Abukar, award-winning founder of the nonprofit organization Action for East African People (AFEAP), is scheduled to plead guilty in the Feeding Our Future case on January 24.
Abukar received the state’s Outstanding Refugee Award, for entrepreneurship in 2021, in the midst of the free-food scandal. The award was presented to her by Gov. Tim Walz himself,
Despite her 2023 indictment in the case, and the upcoming guilty plea, the award has not been rescinded.
Abukar is Defendant No. 58 pverall and will become Guilty Plea No. 24 in the sprawling scandal. She was charged in an 8-count indictment in March 2023 in a stand-alone case. The indictment accuses her of stealing $5.8 million. It appears that AFEAP has not filed a tax return since 2021.
Her plea hearing is scheduled for Friday, January 24 at the Federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis before the District’s chief judge Patrick Schiltz. I use the word “scheduled” because a couple of these deals have fallen apart at the last minute. She will be sentenced at a later date.
Abukar has also gained some attention for her connection to a land deal in Lakeville involving a controversial proposed housing development. She also tried to buy an airplane.
Also on January 24, we have a sentencing scheduled for another defendant. Mukhtar Shariff, Defendant No. 21 in the case, will be sentenced for his convictions on four counts in the first Feeding Our Future trial, which concluded in June 2024. Shariff was best known for his development of a cultural center in Bloomington,
His sentencing will be just the second handed down in the scandal. According to the most recent court filing in the case, prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of more than 21 years, while defense lawyers are asking for something closer to 7.
Meanwhile, over at KARE-11, the ever-alert Lou Raguse is breaking some news about the upcoming Feeding Our Future trial scheduled to begin February 3. He writes,
Court filings indicate prosecutors want to show the jury evidence a former owner of Safari Restaurant has gang affiliations and lied about being a U.S. citizen.
The four defendants in the upcoming trial are due in court tomorrow afternoon for a pre-trial hearing. Those Defendants include Aimee Bock (Defendant No. 1), Salim Said (No. 3), Abdulkadir Salah (No. 4) and Abdi Salah (No. 6).
Salim and Abdulkadir were the co-owners of Safari Restaurant, now defunct, located in south Minneapolis.
KARE-11’s reference to “gang affiliations” involve a series of documents involving the Safari Restaurant co-owners. There is a reference to a video found purporting to depict the pistol-whipping of an unnamed individual by two other unnamed men. The perpetrators (not the defendants) are believed to be members of a street gang (not named in the filings). It would appear from the exchange that the video is unlikely to appear in court.
But just in case, the video is marked on the official exhibit list as GG-60 (p. 98) noted below.
As for “citizenship” it appears that Abdulkadir Salah is not a U.S. citizen, but a citizen of Somalia. The document referenced in court records was an “Application for Cancellation of Removal.” From the court filing (Doc. 424, p. 4)
The documents under dispute appear to be listed as exhibits MM-1 through MM-4 (p. 102).
Yes, yesterday, prosecutors filed their exhibit list in the case, a document running 102 pages. One of the many, many remarkable things about the list is the re-emergence of Empress Malcolm Watson, Jr. Watson was formerly Bock’s fiancé and live-in boyfriend. He has not been charged in the case. Watson’s name appears 13 times in the list, including his banking records. Watson’s company, Handy-Helper’s LLC, appears separately an additional 14 times, again including banking records.
The name of Minneapolis city council member Jamal Osman appears three times on the exhibit list. Osman has not been charged in the case, but was the original founder of a nonprofit, Stigma-Free International, that prosecutors allege was later used in the fraud scheme.
Many defendants not on trial next month are mentioned. Although her name does not appear on the exhibit list, Abukar’s AFEAP is mentioned four times.
Because I keep track of such things, the name “Gar Gaar Family Services” appears three times on the list.
More to come…