First Feeding Our Future convict gets 12 years – InForum

MINNEAPOLIS – A federal judge on Tuesday, Oct. 15, imposed a 12-year prison sentence on the first defendant to be convicted in the Feeding Our Future case. Mohamed Jama Ismail, former co-owner of Empire Cuisine & Market in Shakopee, is one of five people convicted in June of stealing tens of millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs.

A federal jury found Ismail, 51, guilty of wire fraud conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. Jurors also convicted four of Ismail’s co-defendants, but acquitted two others. Ismail must also serve three years of supervised release.

Over the course of a month, the government showed jurors hundreds of pages of forged invoices, falsified meal attendance records, and text messages showing that Ismail and his co-defendants had made more than $49 million in reimbursement requests to the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program, which falsely claimed to be serving millions of meals to children in need.

As part of the sentence, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered Ismail, of Savage, to pay $47,920,514 in restitution along with his co-defendants.

The Minnesota Department of Education, which oversees USDA programs at the state level, paid out nearly $48 million to the group tied to Empire Cuisine. Sponsors of the meal sites, the nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition, withheld about $5.6 million in administrative fees, according to court documents. Prosecutors say this was part of a much larger $250 million scheme in which they have charged 70 people since September 2022.

Prosecutors allege the defendants took advantage of rule changes during the pandemic that initially allowed for-profit restaurants to participate. When the state education department suspected fraud and stopped allowing restaurants to participate, Ismail and his co-defendant Abdiaziz Farah opened fake meal sites under various nonprofits to continue cash flow.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson asked Brasel to impose a 12.5-year prison sentence. In a pre-sentencing filing, Thompson said Ismail “profited handsomely” from his role in the scheme, expressed no remorse for it and personally took home more than $2 million in 2021 alone.

Thompson said Ismail “will leave prison a rich man” after transferring much of the stolen money abroad – including to China – and to Kenya and Somalia, where he has bought property. Thompson says these international real estate holdings are beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement and are unlikely to be seized.

During the hearing, Thompson added that Ismail and his co-conspirators “saw an opportunity in a health crisis and profited from it to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.”

Tim Evans for MPR News

Ismail’s lawyer, Patrick Cotter, argued that his client should not serve more than four years in prison. Cotter wrote in court filings that Ismail was a “minor participant” in the conspiracy because he “did not have full knowledge of the scope and structure of the criminal activity.”

Cotter argued that the main defendant, Farah, controlled all bank accounts, handled all communications with Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition and had full decision-making authority.

Cotter said in court Tuesday that Ismail poses no threat to the public and poses no risk of recidivism.

“There is no continued need for a long prison sentence to effectively correct him and protect the rest of us,” Cotter said.

“I’m not a bad person, I’m just a family man. I am a normal person,” Ismail said in a brief statement read from the courtroom lectern, with Cotter at his side.

Before imposing the 12-year prison sentence, Brasel said Ismail stole “an extraordinary amount of money in an extraordinary short time.”

“When disaster strikes, many of us in the United States have learned to look for helpers. During the global pandemic, they were in abundance,” Brasel added. “At a time when the world was most vulnerable, you decided not to be a helper, but a thief.”

Ismail has already served a seven-month prison sentence after previously pleading guilty to falsely claiming on a passport application that he had lost his passport, when in fact the FBI had seized it during a search in early 2022. Agents arrested Ismail in Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport several months later when he tried to flee to Kenya.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys have requested a postponement of other sentencing hearings scheduled this week for Farah and two others convicted at the trial. The lawyers said they needed to sort out the details of a related jury bribery case.

At the end of the trial, an employee of the defendants admitted that he drove to the home of one of the jurors, delivered a Hallmark gift bag containing $120,000 and promised more cash in exchange for an acquittal. The juror called 911.

Ladan Ali, the woman who handed over the money, pleaded guilty, as did one of her co-defendants. Two of the defendants in the fraud trial and one of their brothers have also been charged and have pleaded not guilty.

This story was originally published on MPRNews.org