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CASE 0:22-cr-00124-NEB-DTS Doc. 856 Filed 08/13/25 Page 1 of 12
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA
Criminal No. 22-124(8) (NEB/DTS)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )
)
Plaintiff, )
) GOVERNMENT’S POSITION
v. ) REGARDING SENTENCING
)
HAYAT MOHAMED NUR, )
)
Defendant. )
The United States of America, by and through its attorneys, Joseph H.
Thompson, Acting United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota, and Harry
M. Jacobs, Matthew S. Ebert, and Daniel W. Bobier, Assistant United States
Attorneys, submits the following sentencing memorandum and respectfully requests
that the Court impose a sentence of 87 months in prison.
I. BACKGROUND
Defendant Hayat Nur was convicted of participating in a massive fraudulent
scheme to obtain federal child nutrition program funds intended to provide free meals
to children in need. The defendant and her conspirators obtained, misappropriated,
and laundered more than $50 million in program funds that were intended as
reimbursements for the cost of serving meals to children. They did so by exploiting
changes in the program intended to ensure underserved children received adequate
nutrition during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nur and her conspirators took advantage of
the Covid-19 pandemic—and the resulting program changes—to enrich themselves
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by fraudulently misappropriating millions of dollars in federal child nutrition
program funds.
Nur was recruited to the fraud scheme by her brother and co-defendant
Abdimajid Nur. Her brother recruited her to create fake documents to support the
fraud. These included all the core materials necessary to the scheme’s success: fake
meal count sheets, fake invoices, and fake attendance rosters containing the names
of the children purportedly fed by the conspirators. At trial, the government
introduced exhibits showing Abdimajid Nur training Hayat Nur on how to create
these bogus documents.
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Gov’t Ex. F-6. Hayat put her brother’s instruction to practice and developed other
means of crafting fraudulent documentation more quickly. For instance, in one email,
Hayat Nur forwarded herself a shell invoice that could be edited—which she termed
a “master document.”
Gov’t Ex. D-42.
Hayat Nur used this “master document” to create fraudulent invoices
purporting to document the purchase of food to serve to children.
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Gov’t Ex. D-44. She also created and sent fraudulent rosters listing the names of
hundreds or thousands of fictitious children that she and her conspirators claimed to
have fed.
The fake meal counts and invoices created by Hayat Nur were the backbone of
the scheme. They substantiated the defendants’ fraudulent claims and satisfied their
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sponsors’ minimal requirements to process reimbursements. Hayat Nur created fake
documentation claiming that she and her conspirators operated 20 food distribution
sites across the state which, combined, purportedly served hundreds and sometimes
thousands of meals to children every day. The false claims represented by those
materials were stunning. In one single invoice from January 2022, the conspirators
claimed entitlement to nearly $2.2 million.
Gov’t Ex. G-359.
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But Hayat Nur did not merely create those documents. She was often the one
who submitted them for payment. In one January 2022 email alone, Hayat Nur
submitted to Partners in Nutrition invoices purporting to document the purchase of
more than $10 million in food and other supposed program expenses.
Gov’t Ex. D-48.
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II. THE PRESENTENCE INVESTIGATION REPORT
A. The Base Offense Level and Loss Amount
The base offense level is 7 pursuant to Guidelines § 2B1.1(a)(1). PSR ¶102. The
base offense level is increased 22 levels pursuant to Guidelines § 2B1.1(1)(L) because
the loss was more than $25 million but less than $65 million. PSR ¶103. The offense
level is increased 2 levels pursuant to Guidelines § 2B1.1 because the offense involved
sophisticated means, including the falsification of documents used to submit
fraudulent claims in which Nur was directly involved. PSR ¶104. The offense level is
increased 2 levels pursuant to Guidelines § 2B1.1(b)(12) because the offense involved
conduct described in 18 U.S.C. § 1040 (Fraud in Connection with a Major Disaster or
Emergency Benefits). PSR ¶105. The offense level is increased by 2 levels pursuant
to Guidelines § 2S1.1(b)(2)(B) because the defendant was convicted under 18 U.S.C.
§ 1956. PSR ¶110.
The offense level is decreased by 2 levels pursuant to Guidelines § 3B1.2(b)
because Nur was a minor participant in the offense. PSR ¶107. The offense level is
decreased by 2 levels because she qualifies as a zero-point offender pursuant to
Guidelines 4C1.1(a) and (b). PSR ¶110.
Based on the above, the total offense level is 29. PSR ¶118. The government
agrees with this calculation.
B. Criminal History
Nur has no significant criminal history, only two minor traffic offenses.
Accordingly, she falls into criminal history category I. PSR ¶118.
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C. Advisory Guidelines Range
An offense level of 29 and criminal history level I results in an advisory
Guidelines range of 87 to 108 months in prison.
III. THE GOVERNMENT’S SENTENCING RECOMMENDATION
Based on a review of the § 3553(a) factors, the government recommends that
the Court impose a sentence of 87 months in prison.
A. Nature and Circumstances of the Offense
Nur participated in one of the largest fraud schemes in the history of the
District of Minnesota, and the single largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the country.
She took advantage of a once-in-a-century global pandemic to enrich herself. She
abused the generosity of Minnesota’s social safety net—a system designed to ensure
that no child goes without food.
Notably, Nur and her conspirators were among the first to get involved in the
massive scheme to fraudulently obtain federal child nutrition program funds. Empire
Cuisine, one of the entities on whose behalf Nur submitted claims and fabricated
invoices, was one of the companies that forced MDE to change the rules to prohibit
for-profit restaurants for operating federal child nutrition program sites. But the
pressure from MDE did not deter Nur or her conspirators. They simply carried on by
opening sites through a variety of non-profits.
Nur asks the Court to consider her, for purposes of the guidelines calculation,
a minimal participant in the crime. The government submits that would fail to
accurately describe her involvement. As discussed above, this fraud would not have
occurred and could not have worked but for the conspiracy’s fake documentation.
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Those documents were the necessary ingredient to the conspirators’ extraction of
some $40 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program. And it was Nur’s role to
create, and often submit, those documents. Nur’s representation in her sentencing
pleading that she only became involved at the eleventh hour is not accurate. By
June 2021, Nur was already generating bogus documents. (See above, Gov’t Ex. F-6.)
From just that point on, Nur and her conspirators fraudulently claimed entitlement
to more than $22 million in program reimbursements. At times in that period, a single
month’s worth of the conspiracy’s claims exceeded $3 and even $4 million.
It is true that Nur did not recruit or direct others in the scheme, nor exercise
supervision over her conspirators. That distinguishes her from many of her co-
defendants, and in recognition of that relatively smaller role the government agrees
that Nur qualifies as a minor participant. But the importance and duration of Nur’s
involvement should preclude treating her as a minimal participant. Although her role
in the fraud scheme may have been smaller than that of some of her conspirators,
Hayat Nur nevertheless played a key role in the scheme. Frauds of this magnitude
cannot be carried out alone. Having different individuals involved in different aspects
of the fraudulent scheme allowed all of the defendants—including Hayat Nur—to
claim they had no knowledge of the fraud. Indeed, at trial, Abdiaziz Farah, Mohamed
Ismail, and Mukhtar Shariff claimed they did not fill out the fraudulent meal counts
or create the fraudulent invoices and therefore had no knowledge of the fraud scheme.
Meanwhile, Hayat Nur and her brother Abdimajid claimed that they did nothing
more than create and fill out documents at the directions of others, without knowing
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those documents’ fraudulent nature. This was by design. In reality, all of the
defendants knew of and participated in the fraud but they structured their conspiracy
to conceal their knowledge and involvement in it. And Hayat Nur’s role in creating
the fake documents was a key part of that concealment.
B. History and Characteristics of the Defendant
Nothing in Nur’s background explains or excuses her crime. While her early
childhood was traumatic, Nur escaped her troubled life abroad and came to live in
the U.S. with her family in 2010. Since then, she managed to create an ostensibly
successful and stable life for herself. She graduated from high school, then college,
then enrolled in a master’s program. She found gainful employment and a husband
and by all accounts had succeeded in creating for herself the stability that her early
years lacked. It was in 2021, at the very time she was finishing her graduate work
and that she married her husband, that Nur joined this conspiracy. In short, Nur
seems not to have been pushed to criminality by her background, but rather drawn
to criminality in spite of it.
C. The Need for Deterrence
Nur participated is one of the largest fraud schemes in the history of the
District of Minnesota, and the single largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the country.
But Nur did not just take advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enrich herself and
her conspirators. She took advantage of Minnesota’s compassion and its efforts to
ensure no child went hungry.
Make no mistake, Nur’s fraud has done great damage to the state. It has eroded
trust in the government and raised questions about the sustainability of the state’s
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system of social services. Although Nur played a relatively smaller role in the massive
fraud scheme than some of her conspirators, her actions, and the actions of many
similarly situated less culpable defendants, undermined and endangered legitimate
nonprofit organizations that rely on donations to carry out necessary and important
charitable work.
Importantly in this particular case, the Court must send the message that
fraud schemes like this are not worth it and that individuals who participate in fraud
schemes such as this one will pay a stiff price when they are caught.
Taking into consideration the Sentencing Guidelines, as well as all of the other
factors required to be considered under § 3553(a), the government respectfully
submits that a sentence of 87 months in prison appropriately reflects the seriousness
of Nur’s crimes, promotes respect for the law, provides a just punishment, and creates
adequate deterrence not only to Nur, but to all other individuals who take advantage
of the state and believe that they are above the law.
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IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, the government respectfully requests that the
Court impose a sentence of 87 months in prison.
Respectfully Submitted,
Dated: August 13, 2025 JOSEPH H. THOMPSON
Acting United States Attorney
/s/ Harry M. Jacobs
BY: HARRY M. JACOBS
MATTHEW S. EBERT
DANIEL W. BOBIER
Assistant U.S. Attorneys
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