Government's Trial Brief — United States v. Hamdi Hussein Omar (D. Minn., Doc. 612)

Summary

The Government's Trial Brief, filed 03/31/25 as Doc. 612 in United States v. Hamdi Hussein Omar, Criminal No. 22-223 (NEB/DTS), in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. It states that a September 13, 2022 grand jury returned a 61-count indictment charging 14 defendants, and that Omar is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, among other counts. It describes the Federal Child Nutrition Program and the roles of sponsors such as Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition. It alleges that after the Covid-19 waivers the sponsors enrolled more than 200 new sites, that the conspirators misappropriated more than $45 million, and that the defendants received more than $47 million. The brief closes by discussing summary charts and Rule 902 business-record stipulations.

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     CASE 0:22-cr-00223-NEB-DTS        Doc. 612    Filed 03/31/25   Page 1 of 16




                        UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                           DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA
                          Criminal No. 22-223 (NEB/DTS)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                    Plaintiff,

      v.                                        GOVERNMENT’S TRIAL BRIEF

 12. HAMDI HUSSEIN OMAR,

           Defendant.


      The United States of America, by and through its attorneys, Lisa D.

Kirkpatrick, Acting United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota, Joseph H.

Thompson, Matthew S. Ebert, Harry M. Jacobs, and Daniel W. Bobier, Assistant

United States Attorneys, respectfully submits the following trial brief in this matter.

I.    OVERVIEW

      On September 13, 2022, a grand jury returned a 61-count indictment charging

14 defendants—Aimee Bock, Abdikerm Eidleh, Salim Said, Abdulkadir Salah,

Ahmed Omar-Hashim, Abdi Salah, Abdihakim Ahmed, Ahmed Artan, Abdikadir

Mohamud, Abdinasir Abshir, Asad Mohamed Abshir, Hamdi Omar, Ahmed Ghedi,

and Abdirahman Ahmed—with a number of crimes, including: conspiracy to commit

wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1343; wire fraud, in violation of 18

U.S.C. § 1343; conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, in violation of 18

U.S.C. §§ 371 and 666; federal programs bribery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666;

conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C.

§ 1956(a) and (h); and money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1957.


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       The defendant in this trial, Hamdi Omar, is charged with four crimes:

conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

       The indictment alleges that Hamdi Omar and her co-conspirators orchestrated

and carried out a scheme that defrauded the Federal Child Nutrition Program, a

government aid program designed to provide free meals to children in need. Hamdi

Omar and her co-conspirators exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to obtain,

misappropriate, and launder tens of millions of dollars in program funds that were

intended as reimbursements for the cost of serving meals and food to children. In all,

the conspirators fraudulently misappropriated more than $45 million in Federal

Child Nutrition Program funds.

II.    BACKGROUND

       A.    The Federal Child Nutrition Program

       The Federal Child Nutrition Program is a government program that ensures

children receive nutritious meals and snacks that adequately promote healthy

physical and education development. The program is run through the Food and

Nutrition Service, an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture

(“USDA”). That agency administers Federal Child Nutrition Programs, which

includes the Summer Food Service Program and Child and Adult Care Food Program

(together, the “Federal Child Nutrition Program”).

       The Summer Food Service Program (“SFSP”) is a federal program established

to ensure that children continue to receive nutritious meals when school is not in

session. The Summer Food Service Program reimburses non-profit organizations and

other participating entities that serve free healthy meals and snacks to children and

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teens in low-income areas. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (“CACFP”) is a

federal program that reimburses non-profit organizations and other participating

entities that serve healthy meals and snacks to children and adults at participating

childcare centers, daycare homes, and after-school programs.

      The Federal Child Nutrition Program operates throughout the United States.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service administers the programs at the national

and regional levels by distributing federal funds to state governments, which provide

oversight for the Federal Child Nutrition Program. In Minnesota, the Minnesota

Department of Education (“MDE”) administers the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

      The Federal Child Nutrition Program operated through sponsors, which

oversaw the sites. Sponsors, like Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition, are

responsible for monitoring the operation of the programs and submitting

reimbursement claims.

      Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition were non-profit organizations

purportedly in the business of helping community partners participate in the Federal

Child Nutrition Program. Both were approved sponsors of the Federal Child

Nutrition Program, and prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, each operated

as a small non-profit that sponsored the participation of Minnesota daycares and

after school programs in the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

      Meals funded by the Federal Child Nutrition Program in Minnesota are served

at “sites.” Each site participating in the Federal Child Nutrition Program must be

sponsored by an organization authorized to participate in the Federal Child Nutrition



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Program. Sponsors are required to submit an application to MDE for each site.

Sponsors are responsible for monitoring each of their sites and preparing

reimbursement claims for their sites.

         Sponsors submit reimbursement claims to MDE on behalf of sites under their

sponsorship. The USDA provides federal reimbursement funds to MDE on a per-meal

basis. MDE provides the federal funds to the sponsoring agency, which in turn pays

the reimbursement funds to the sites under its sponsorship. The sponsoring agency

retains ten to fifteen percent of the funds as an administrative fee in exchange for

sponsoring the sites, submitting reimbursement claims, and disbursing the federal

funds.

         In exchange for sponsoring the sites’ fraudulent participation in the program,

sponsors received Federal Child Nutrition Program funds as administrative fees. In

2020 and 2021, Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition received tens of

millions of dollars in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds in administrative fees.

Because the amount of administrative fees the sponsors received was based on the

amount of federal funds received by sites under its sponsorship, Feeding Our Future

and Partners In Nutrition received tens of millions of dollars in administrative fees

to which they were not entitled, due to its sponsorship and facilitation of fraudulent

sites participating in the program.

         B.    The Covid-19 Waivers and Fraud

         The Covid-19 pandemic, including various stay-at-home orders and distance

learning, disrupted the operation of the Federal Child Nutrition Program. As a result,



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the USDA issued waivers to the program requirements, allowing additional flexibility

for implementing the program and expanding the scope of the program. Following

the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting waivers, Feeding Our Future

and Partners In Nutrition sponsored an exponential number of new sites—more than

200 new Federal Child Nutrition Program sites.

      Historically, the Federal Child Nutrition Program provided meals to children

involved in education-based programs or activities. During the Covid-19 pandemic,

the USDA waived several of the standard requirements for participation in the

Federal Child Nutrition Program. Among other things, the USDA allowed for-profit

restaurants to participate in the program. It also allowed for food distribution to

children outside of educational programs. At the same time, the state government’s

stay-at-home order and telework policies made it more difficult to oversee the

program. These changes left the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

      Beginning in approximately April 2020—with the onset of the Covid-19

pandemic—Feeding Our Future and Partners In Nutrition dramatically increased

the number of sites under their sponsorship as well as the amount of Federal Child

Nutrition Program funds received by those sites.

      Feeding Our Future went from receiving and disbursing approximately $3.4

million in federal funds to sites under its sponsorship in 2019 to nearly $200 million

in 2021. Partners In Nutrition went from receiving and disbursing approximately

$5.6 million in federal funds to sites under its sponsorship in 2019 to more than $200




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million in 2021. In 2021, sites under the sponsorship of Partners In Nutrition claimed

to have served more than 80 million meals to children in Minnesota.

III.    SCHEME TO DEFRAUD THE FEDERAL CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAM

        A.    Feeding Our Future

        Co-conspirator Aimee Bock was the founder and executive director of Feeding

Our Future, a non-profit organization in the business of helping community partners

participate in the Federal Child Nutrition Program and related federal programs.

Feeding Our Future was an approved sponsor of the Federal Child Nutrition

Program. As a sponsor, Feeding Our Future was responsible for submitting site

applications to MDE for approval, monitoring active sites, submitting claims for

reimbursement from MDE, and disbursing federal funds to sites under its

sponsorship. Feeding Our Future received payment from MDE and kept an

administrative fee—typically 10 to 15 percent. Feeding Our Future provided the

remaining funds directly to sites.

        During the Covid-19 pandemic, Bock and her company recruited individuals

and entities to open more than 200 Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout

the state of Minnesota. The sites fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to

thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed and despite

having few, if any, staff and little to no experience serving this volume of meals.

        The conspirators, including defendant Hamdi Omar, collectively claimed to be

serving meals to tens of thousands of children each day throughout the State of

Minnesota, for which they fraudulently claimed and received millions of dollars in

Federal Child Nutrition Program funds. For example, co-conspirators Salim Said and

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Abdulkadir Salah owned and operated Safari Restaurant. In April 2020, during the

early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Safari Restaurant enrolled in the Federal Child

Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. In all, the owners

of Safari Restaurant claimed to have served more than 3.9 million meals to children

between April 2020 and November 2021.

      Safari Restaurant also operated as a vendor purporting to deliver food and

meals to be served at other Federal Child Nutrition Program sites created by co-

conspirators throughout the state of Minnesota. Safari Restaurant claimed to have

provided more than 2.2 million meals to other Federal Child Nutrition Program sites

involved in the scheme. In all, as part of the scheme to defraud, Safari Restaurant

received more than $16 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds in 2020

and 2021. Said and Abdulkadir Salah sent much of this money to their co-conspirators

via shell companies created and used to receive and launder the proceeds of the

fraudulent scheme.

      Co-conspirator Salim Said operated another site under the sponsorship of

Feeding Our Future. Said was one of the creators of ASA Limited LLC in

September 2020. Said, along with two partners (co-conspirators Abdihakim Ahmed

and Ahmed Ghedi), was an equal one-third owner in the company. ASA Limited

opened a federal child nutrition program site in St. Paul, Minnesota, under the

sponsorship of Feeding Our Future at the Gurey Deli, a small market located in a

strip mall in St. Paul. Within just three weeks of creating the ASA Limited site, the

co-conspirators fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to 2,000 or 3,000 children



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each day, seven days a week. Defendant Hamdi Omar was the owner of the Gurey

Deli (where her co-conspirators had the fraudulent ASA Limited food site):




      B.    Stigma-Free Waite Park: Defendant Hamdi Omar’s Fraudulent
            Site

      By October 2020, MDE became concerned about the drastic increase in meal

claims by sites under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. In response to MDE’s

well-founded concerns, Bock tried to cover up the fraud by diverting attention away

from Feeding Our Future and the scheme by blaming MDE when it attempted to

perform legitimate oversight. MDE regularly raised questions about the number of

sites and amount of meal claims being submitted by Feeding Our Future on behalf of

sites under its sponsorship. Bock knew that MDE’s concerns were valid, and that

little of the Federal Child Nutrition Program funds disbursed by Feeding Our Future


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were used to feed children. Bock also knew that if MDE discovered the true nature of

the fraud, the flow of federal funds to Feeding Our Future and sites under its

sponsorship would stop.

      Due to these concerns, MDE announced that the Federal Child Nutrition

Program no longer allowed restaurants and other for-profit companies to enroll as

sites. MDE explained that restaurants would only be allowed to participate as meal

vendors providing food. MDE further announced that any restaurants enrolled as

distribution sites would be closed as of October 31, 2020.

      Shortly after MDE disallowed for-profit restaurants, some of defendant Hamdi

Omar’s conspirators, including Ahmed Artan, obtained a non-profit entity, Stigma-

Free International, for use in carrying out the fraud. They immediately used their

new non-profit to open a number of new Federal Child Nutrition Program sites. Other

co-conspirators created additional shell companies to serve as for-profit meal vendor

companies purporting to provide the meals to be served to children at these sites.

Together, the defendants claimed to be serving meals to tens of thousands of children

each day throughout the state of Minnesota, for which they fraudulently claimed and

received millions of dollars in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.

      Defendant Hamdi Omar opened up one of those sites, Stigma-Free Waite Park.

This site, which claimed to serve 2,000 children a day, seven days a week, operated

out of the Green Market, a small market and grocery store located in a strip mall in

Waite Park, Minnesota.




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      Hamdi Omar signed and submitted many of the fraudulent meal counts for the

Stigma Free Waite Park site.




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      The conspirators created a company called Feeding Our Youth that purported

to serve as a meal vendor for the site. Between April and November 2021, Omar and

her co-conspirators claimed to have served more than 500,000 meals at the Stigma-

Free Waite Park site. Based on these claims, the co-conspirators received more than

$1 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program reimbursements.

             1.     Fake Meal Counts and Rosters

      The trial evidence will reveal that Omar and her conspirators created and

submitted sham meal count sheets and phony attendance rosters purporting to list

the names of children who received meals at their sites. But these lists did not contain

the names of real children. Indeed, school district personnel will testify that the vast



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majority of the falsified names on these rosters appear nowhere in the official school

district enrollment records of multiple school districts where the defendants

professed to serve millions of meals. Some of the roster spreadsheets that Omar sent

even contained an imbedded formula that inserted a random number between 7 and

17 in the age column of the spreadsheet.




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      In support of their fraudulent claims, Omar and her co-conspirators also

created and submitted fraudulent invoices purporting to show their purchase of food

to feed children.

      C.     The Money Laundering

      In all, the defendants received more than $47 million in Federal Child

Nutrition Program funds between April 2020 through January 2022. These federal

funds were received by the defendants’ companies from Feeding Our Future.

      Omar and her co-conspirators created and used an array of entities and shell

companies to receive, launder, and distribute their fraudulent proceeds. Some of

these companies purported to be meal vendors providing meals and food to program

sites, but in reality, the companies were shells created to disguise the source and

ownership of the fraud proceeds. The defendants transferred millions of dollars

between their shell companies to conceal the source of the funds, and then used the



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shell companies to purchase millions of dollars’ worth of real estate, cars, and fund

their lifestyles and personal spending.

             1.    The “Vendor” Companies

      Omar and her co-conspirators used “vendor” companies—ostensibly in the

business of providing food for distribution—to launder their fraudulent proceeds. In

reality, the vendor companies provided only a fraction of the food that their sites

claimed to be serving and acted a source to conceal the source of the fraud proceeds.

      As the financial records will establish, Stigma-Free and its various related

entities, in turn, paid the bulk of these funds over to the vendor companies,

purportedly to pay for food distribution at its various sites. Instead, the defendants

used the vendor companies to receive and launder the Federal Child Nutrition

Program funds while concealing the money as payments for the purchase of food.

      Defendant Hamdi Omar created a company called Feeding Our Youth LLC,

ostensibly to run the Stigma-Free Waite Park site. Feeding Our Youth purported to

be a food vendor company that provided food and meals to be served at the Stigma-

Free Waite Park site. In reality, she used Feeding Our Youth as a shell company

designed to obtain and launder fraud proceeds. In all, she deposited more than $1

million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds into Feeding Our Youth bank

accounts.

             2.    The Shell Companies

      The defendants also created and used an array of other companies to conceal

and launder their fraud proceeds. For her part, in September 2020, defendant Hamdi




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Omar registered Omar Management Corporation, which she used as a shell company

to receive and launder her cut of the fraud proceeds.

IV.    POTENTIAL LEGAL AND EVIDENTIARY ISSUES

       A.    Summary Testimony and Charts

       The United States intends to call law enforcement agents to testify as

summary witnesses in its case-in-chief. “The testimony of a summary witness may be

received so long as she bases her summary on evidence received in the case and is

available for cross-examination.” United States v. Ellefsen, 655 F.3d 769, 780

(8th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v. King, 616 F.2d 1034, 1041 (8th Cir. 1980)).

       In addition, because this case involves voluminous documentary evidence,

including bank records and other financial documents, the government intends to

offer summary charts into evidence in order to assist the jury. Summary charts are

properly admitted when (1) the charts fairly summarize voluminous trial evidence,

(2) they assist the jury in understanding testimony already introduced, and (3) the

witness who prepared the charts is subject to cross-examination with all documents

used to prepare the summary. United States v. Spires, 628 F.3d 1049, 1052-53 (8th

Cir. 2011) (citing Fed. R. Evid. 1006). “Also, summaries may include assumptions and

conclusions so long as they are ‘based upon evidence in the record.’” Id. at 1053.

       B.    Stipulations    and    Self-Authentication              Pursuant        to
             Federal Rule of Evidence 902

       The parties have discussed foundational stipulations with respect to certain

business records that will obviate the need to call custodians of records as witnesses

at trial. While the parties are still working through the details of these stipulations,



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the government is hopeful that the parties will be able to put this stipulation on the

record at the pretrial conference.

      With respect to any business records for which the defendants are unwilling to

stipulate with respect to foundation, the government has and will be providing notice

to defense counsel of its intent to offer these business records pursuant to the

self-authentication provisions of Federal Rules of Evidence 803(6) and 902(11). The

records have and will be identified with particularity to the defense in the

government’s Federal Rule of Evidence 902 notices, and they have all previously been

provided to the defense in the government’s Rule 16 disclosures. Certifications for

these records have also been made available for the defendant’s review. The

government will also seek to admit certain public records pursuant to the self-

authentication provisions of Federal Rules of Evidence 803(8) and 902(1), (2), and (4).



Dated: March 31, 2025                          Respectfully Submitted,

                                               LISA D. KIRKPATRICK
                                               Acting United States Attorney

                                               /s/ Joseph H. Thompson
                                        BY:    JOSEPH H. THOMPSON
                                               MATTHEW S. EBERT
                                               HARRY M. JACOBS
                                               DANIEL W. BOBIER
                                               Assistant United States Attorneys




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