Feeding Our Future: Defendant No. 71
Hibo Daar has been formally indicted in the free-food scandal, becoming Defendant No. 71 in the case. She is currently being held in the Sherburne County jail.
You will recall that Daar was arrested at the airport on Sunday, before she could fly to Europe, en route to Dubai.
Sunday night, she was arrested on a criminal complaint filed by the FBI. She has now been indicted by a grand jury on two counts of wire fraud. The U.S. Attorney for Minnesota has issued a press release.
The details are largely the same ones outlined in the original complaint: Daar’s nonprofit, Northside Wellness Center of Minneapolis, received some $1.7 million from the free-food program through Feeding Our Future, while spending only a tiny amount of money on food to feed children.
The official address for the Northside nonprofit is in a small office block on East Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. It turns out that I had visited the location almost two years ago.
Northside’s food distribution site was registered at the address next door. A second large food site, operated by a competing nonprofit, also operated there.
One door farther away was yet another large food distribution site, that billed the state for more than $800,000.
A detention hearing previously scheduled for tomorrow (Friday) morning has been pushed back to next week (June 4).