Federal agents raided a St. Paul education business Thursday morning in connection with the Feeding Our Future fraud case.
According to a search warrant unsealed Thursday, New Vision Foundation, a nonprofit that says it trains underserved youth in technology, operated two food sites and claimed to serve more than one million meals to children at its St. Paul site in 2021. The organization used Feeding Our Future as a sponsor to access funds from the federal child nutrition program.
The development comes three years after the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office first filed indictments in 2022 against 47 defendants in the Feeding Our Future case. New charges were filed throughout the years until a total of 70 defendants were charged, the last cases being filed in February 2024.
The office said last month that its investigation into the case is “ongoing,” but has not said more and declined to comment Thursday.
New Vision Foundation’s owner, Hussein Farah, declined to comment when reached by phone. Hussein, who is not charged with a crime, served on Sahan Journal’s board of directors from 2018 to 2024. He deferred comment to his attorneys, including Abdinasir M. Abdulahi, who also served on Sahan’s board from 2018 to 2022. Sahan’s board members are not involved in news coverage and day-to-day operations.
Both of Hussein’s attorneys did not return a message seeking comment.
New Vision Foundation is located in a St. Paul warehouse district next to an electronics recycling company that is not associated with the foundation. The scene at the building was calm Thursday during the noon hour.
The search warrant states that employees at the recycling company told law enforcement that they’ve never seen children at New Vision Foundation’s office. It also said that the recycling company is a reentry program that “employs many registered sex offenders,” so children could not be present at New Vision Foundation.
Federal prosecutors have focused heavily on whether children were ever seen at food sites in several other Feeding Our Future cases.
Hussein enrolled New Vision Foundation into the federal child programs in February 2021 using Feeding Our Future as a sponsor, according to the search warrant. Shortly after, he claimed to serve 3,000 meals a day to children at the organization’s office, according to the search warrant.
Hussein also allegedly enrolled a second New Vision Foundation site in Waite Park under Feeding Our Future during the fall of 2021. New Vision Foundation claimed to serve between 1,000 and 2,000 meals a day at that site.
New Vision Foundation stopped its participation in the federal child nutrition programs after November 2021.
The alleged fraud involved Feeding Our Future receiving federal funds through the Minnesota Department of Education. Feeding Our Future then distributed those funds to food vendors and food sites like New Vision Foundation, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several organizations reported serving more meals than they actually did, or never served any at all, in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors.
The search warrant alleges that New Vision Foundation filed questionable reports about purchasing food from suppliers. The foundation listed Star Distribution as one of its suppliers. Star Distribution was run by Ikram Mohamed, who is charged in the Feeding Our Future case and is awaiting trial.
New Vision Foundation allegedly paid more than $300,000 to Star Distribution.
New Vision Foundation also allegedly paid a local restaurant $2.2 million as a food vendor between March 2021 and January 2022. The search warrant says the “small storefront restaurant in south Minneapolis” also received more than $500,000 from a different food site operated by Sharmarke Issa, who pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this year in the Feeding Our Future case.
The search warrant includes a February 2021 invoice from New Vision Foundation reportedly paying $30,000 for food from another vendor. The warrant alleges that the address listed for that vendor was located at an apartment, and that forensic accountants were “unable to locate purchases of food in any significant quantities” from that invoice.
Board members questioned food contract
The search warrant also details apparent acrimony from New Vision Foundation’s board of directors over its business with Feeding Our Future.
Three former board members allegedly told federal law enforcement that they were surprised to learn that New Vision Foundation had contracts to serve food to kids. They also said they were surprised to see that “dollars suddenly started flowing” from Feeding Our Future into their organization.
One board member apparently resigned over the matter after the Feeding Our Future fraud investigation went public in early 2022.
In response, the former board chair hired CliftonLarsonAllen to conduct an audit of New VIsion Foundation, according to the search warrant. The former board chair also allegedly suggested hiring a law firm to conduct a formal investigation into Hussein. Afterwards, the former board chair was “forced off the board,” and later told investigators he was “planning to resign anyways given his concerns that could not be addressed by Hussein Farah,” according to the warrant.
Thirty-eight defendants in the Feeding Our Future case have pleaded guilty to their crimes, seven were convicted at trial and two defendants were acquitted at trial.
At a news conference in March following the conviction of former Feeding Our Future Executive Director Aimee Bock, lead prosecutor Joe Thompson repeatedly said the case was still under investigation.
“Are you anticipating more people to be charged in the case?” asked a reporter.
“Yes,” Thompson responded. “Our investigation is ongoing.”
