A St. Paul man has been sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for taking about $1.66 million in money meant to feed children, the 31st defendant sentenced in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota announced the sentence on October 1 for Abdi Nur Salah.
The office says Salah received approximately $1,660,000 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds. The program reimburses sites for meals served to children, and prosecutors say the scheme he joined billed it for meals that were never served. The $250 million figure covers the whole Feeding Our Future scheme, not Salah’s share alone.
How Salah fit into the scheme
Salah registered Stigma-Free International, a nonprofit prosecutors said was used to carry out the scheme. Its meal sites were in Willmar, Mankato, St. Cloud, Waite Park and St. Paul, according to the charging announcement from September 2022. That announcement said participants submitted fraudulent meal count sheets purporting to document how many children and meals were served.
The sentencing announcement adds a number that shows the scale of the paperwork. Co-conspirators, it says, fraudulently claimed to have served nearly five million meals to children over twelve months, from November 2020 to November 2021. The release attributes that claim to the group around Salah, not to him individually.
For readers following the case, the question is where it stands now, four years after charges were filed. Some of it is settled: 47 defendants were charged in 2022 across six indictments and three criminal informations, and 31 of them now have sentences. The 33-month term for Salah is the latest of those, announced on October 1.
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What earlier sentences looked like
The first sentence in the case came in October 2024, when Mohamed Jama Ismail received 144 months, or 12 years, in prison in what the Justice Department described as a $250 million fraud involving the Federal Child Nutrition Program. Against that term, Salah’s 33 months is a fraction. The sentencing announcement does not break down how the court weighed his role against those of other defendants.
It also does not say whether Salah was ordered to repay the roughly $1.66 million, or how much of the $250 million has been recovered. Those are details the court record would carry, and the office has not highlighted them in its release.
What the figures show about Salah’s share
Salah’s $1.66 million is under 1 percent of the $250 million total, which shows how many people were drawing on the same program. The scheme was built from dozens of defendants and sites, not a single operator, and the sentences so far reflect that spread. Ismail’s 144 months is more than four times Salah’s 33 months. The Justice Department’s announcements give each defendant’s own dollar amount and role, and those differences, rather than the shared $250 million label, are what sort one sentence from another.
The program behind the meals
Feeding Our Future acted as a sponsor in the Federal Child Nutrition Program, which the Department of Agriculture funds. One piece of that program is the Summer Food Service Program, under which kids aged 18 and under can get free meals and snacks during the summer, according to the agency. The money flows from the federal government to sponsors and then to the sites that serve the food, which is why prosecutors focused on the meal counts the sites submitted.
The department’s inspector general investigates misuse of that money. Its fraud page lists organizational misuse of reimbursement funds among the problems it takes reports on, alongside school meals, WIC and SNAP.
Following the remaining Feeding Our Future cases
Each sentencing announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota carries a running count, which is the simplest way to follow the case. Salah’s announcement is the one that put the number at 31. Of the 47 charged in 2022, that leaves defendants whose cases have not produced a sentence in the announcements so far, though the office has not published a list of them in the releases cited here.
Anyone who suspects misuse of child nutrition money, such as a meal site billing for children who are not there, can call the Agriculture Department’s inspector general hotline at (202) 690-1622. Local program administrators and state agencies that oversee meal sponsors also take complaints. Details worth writing down before calling include the site address, dates, and the sponsor’s name.
The October 1 announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota is the latest official account of the case.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
