Prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison term for one of the key defendants in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, which they call the nation’s largest COVID-19 fraud scheme.
The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office says Abdiaziz Farah was “one of the early movers” in a conspiracy to fleece taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs out of hundreds of millions of dollars during the pandemic.
Farah, 36, was a co-owner of Empire Cuisine and Market, a small Shakopee restaurant that operated fake meal sites under the sponsorship of the nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care, also known as Partners in Nutrition.
In 2024, jurors convicted Farah and four of his six co-defendants of stealing more than $47 million by submitting false reimbursement claims backed by phony invoices and meal attendance rosters that included the names of fictional children such as Rgian Pumqr and Britishy Melony.
In a court filing, prosecutors say Farah “personally pocketed more than $8 million of that sum” and deserves three decades in prison because he “helmed the conspiracy, became the sole director of Empire Cuisine and Market, and chose how the conspiracy’s profits would be divvied up among its participants.”
Defense attorneys counter that the 30-year prison term that prosecutors are seeking is “substantially longer than the average murderer convicted in Federal Court (a 244-month sentence).”
The defense also notes that convicted cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried received a sentence of 25 years for a much larger scheme, and that Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani of Theranos were sentenced to 11 1/4 and just under 13 years, respectively, for a conspiracy to defraud investors of their health technology company.
As closing arguments were underway in the 2024 trial, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered a halt to the proceedings when Farah and several of his co-defendants were caught trying to bribe a juror by sending a Hallmark gift bag containing $120,000 in cash to her home.
Farah later pleaded guilty to jury bribery and could face additional prison time when he’s sentenced separately in that case. After prosecutors disclosed the bribery attempt in court, Farah reset his iPhone to delete text messages and other evidence when Brasel ordered the defendants to surrender their electronic devices to FBI agents.
Farah is among 72 people charged since late 2022 in the Feeding Our Future investigation and is the fifth to be sentenced. In October, Brasel sentenced Mohamed Ismail, Farah’s trial co-defendant, to 12 years in prison. In January she handed Mukhtar Shariff, who was also convicted at the 2024 trial, a 17 1/2-year term. Shariff was the only defendant to testify in his own defense.
Brasel sentenced Sahra M. Nur, who pleaded guilty in the case, to more than four years in prison and ordered her to pay $5 million in restitution. Sharon D. Ross, who enrolled her St. Paul food shelf in the food programs and also pleaded guilty, received a 3 1/2 year sentence. Brasel ordered Ross to repay $2.4 million.
