A judge in Minnesota sentenced three men to a combined total of 155 months, or nearly 13 years, in prison for their roles in a nonprofit’s fraud scheme that defrauded the Federal Child Nutrition Program of millions of dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, 40, of Apple Valley, Minnesota, who pleaded guilty in March 2025, was sentenced to 54 months, or 4 1/2 years, in prison on money laundering and wire fraud counts, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in an Aug. 27 statement.

Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi, 35, of Minneapolis, who pleaded guilty in June 2025, received a 65-month, or almost 5 1/2-year, prison term for similar crimes. Ahmed Sharif Omar-Hashim, 43, of Minneapolis, was sentenced to three years in jail for wire fraud after pleading guilty in December 2023.

The three men are part of the United States v. Aimee Marie Bock case, according to a September 2022 statement from the DOJ. Prosecutors said at the time that a Minnesota nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, and its affiliates stole more than $240 million in federal funds, constituting the nation’s largest COVID-19 pandemic relief scheme.

“This was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions,” then-U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger said at the time.

In May, Aimee Bock, 44, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, was sentenced to 500 months in prison for her role in the fraud scheme, according to a May 22 statement from the DOJ.

Announcing the sentence, Judge Nancy Brasel told Bock, “A sentence of less than 500 months would not do justice to the people of Minnesota, who were in a very real sense the victims of this fraud,” according to the DOJ.

Because schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, officials relaxed rules for the Federal Child Nutrition Program and began allowing non-educational organizations to feed needy children.

Bad actors figured out how to take advantage. Feeding Our Future recruited people to open more than 250 nutrition program sites throughout Minnesota. These locations “fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed,” the DOJ said in 2022 when announcing the first wave of defendants.

To enroll in the program and to receive and launder proceeds of the scheme, the defendants “created dozens of shell companies” in attempts to hide their fraud, which included submitting fake documentation, the DOJ said.

Aimee Bock, the executive director of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, in St. Anthony, Minn., on Jan. 27, 2022. (Shari L. Gross/Star Tribune via AP)

Alarm bells started ringing after officials saw how quickly Feeding Our Future’s program was expanding. In 2021, the organization received and disbursed $200 million, 59 times more than the $3.4 million it handled in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 14 defendants originally charged in the United States v. Aimee Marie Bock indictment were accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $32 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds, which they allegedly used for personal benefits, including real estate, travel, and vehicles, according to the DOJ’s September 2022 announcement.

“They hid their greed behind a web of fraud, bribery and money laundering, but money leaves a trail,” Special Agent in Charge Adam Jobes, from IRS Criminal Investigation’s Chicago Field Office, said in an Aug. 27 statement. “Working shoulder to shoulder with our law enforcement partners, IRS Criminal Investigation special agents unraveled that web, dollar by dollar, and made sure deceit and grift came with a price.”

The Federal Child Nutrition Program funds meals for children at various sites sponsored by authorized organizations. Sponsoring organizations submit an application to the Minnesota Department of Education for each site and are responsible for overseeing and preparing reimbursement claims for these sites.

Once a claim is submitted, the Department of Agriculture releases federal reimbursements to the Minnesota Department of Education, which then distributes them to various sponsoring organizations. The organizations then disburse funds to sites, retaining 10 percent to 15 percent as an administrative fee.

According to the indictment, Ali Ahmed and Ghedi, together with another individual, opened a Federal Child Nutrition Program site in St. Paul, Minnesota, in September 2020. The conspirators claimed to have served more than 1.6 million meals through the site between September 2020 and September 2021.

The conspirators submitted false meal counts, invoices, and attendance rosters for children who purportedly received the meals. Feeding Our Future, the site’s sponsor, received more than $400,000 in administrative fees. Ali Ahmed also paid about $49,000 in kickbacks to a Feeding Our Future employee, according to the indictment.

Ghedi, along with co-conspirators, caused a loss of about $7.2 million to the Federal Child Nutrition Program, according to an Aug. 12 filing submitted to court.

Omar-Hashim opened another site in September 2020 and claimed to have fed more than 1.6 million meals over a 12-month period. Based on the claims, Omar-Hashim and other conspirators received about $7.49 million as reimbursements, according to an Aug. 14 filing. Feeding Our Future received about $400,000 in administrative fees while the same employee received roughly $45,000 in kickbacks, according to the indictment.

Ali Ahmed, Abdullahi Ghedi, and Omar-Hashim are among the latest individuals to be sentenced in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, the DOJ said in its recent statement.

“These defendants saw a program meant to help Americans through one of the hardest times in recent memory and saw an opportunity to line their own pockets,” Jobes said in the statement.

Feeding Our Future disbanded following the scandal.

Janice Hisle contributed to this report.