ScandalTracker 2025: Guilty pleas in Scandal #22
As the first week of Feeding Our Future Trial #2 comes to a close, we appear to have two guilty pleas in another, unrelated scandal. This scandal features some celebrity connections.
ScandalTracker 2025TM has grown so large that we’ve taken to numbering each case to keep track. The latest version of the Tracker includes two additional cases, pushing the 2019-2025 total above $611 million.
Scandal #22 above goes by the name Futuristic Management Group, the corporate entity accused of defrauding the Federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and other programs of approximately $1 million. There are many such PPP fraud cases in Minnesota, which we have omitted from the Tracker, as they involve theft directly from the U.S. government. But this scandal, in part, involved the defrauding of Hennepin County, the state’s most populous county, and state government.
As the U.S. Attorney stated back in May 2024,
According to court documents, beginning in 2020, through the present, Tezzaree El-Amin Champion, 27, and Marcus Alexander Hamilton, 27, devised and carried out a fraud scheme to obtain funds from a variety of federal, state, local, and private COVID-19 relief programs.
On Tuesday, Mr. Hamilton pled guilty to his role in the scheme. He pled guilty to two counts, including one count of wire fraud. Sentencing guidelines call for three to four years in prison.
His co-conspirator, Mr. Champion, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on February 26 in Federal court. I promised celebrities? MPR News reported back in May:
Champion is the great-nephew of Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, and the son of Minneapolis North basketball star Khalid El-Amin, who went on to play for the University of Connecticut and the Chicago Bulls. Neither man is named anywhere in court documents related to the case.
To repeat, neither Sen. Champion nor Mr. El-Amin have been linked to the case or accused of any wrong doing.