A Rochester restaurant owner testified Wednesday that Safari Restaurant had an outsized role in helping steal an estimated $250 million from the federal government.
The popular Somali restaurant in Minneapolis, which is now closed, played a key management role in Feeding Our Future’s participation in federal child nutrition programs, testified Sharmake Jama.
“[Feeding Our Future] told me Safari would teach me everything I needed to know to run the program,” he said.
Sharmake Jama, 37, testified in the joint trial of Feeding Our Future’s then-executive director, Aimee Bock, and Salim Said, who co-owned Safari Restaurant at the time.
Sharmake Jama told jurors that his business, Brava Restaurant, started asking for money from the federal food program in October 2020. The program reimbursed local businesses for serving children ready-to-eat meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he spent the next year falsely reporting that Brava served large numbers of meals in order to siphon $5.3 million from the federal government.
Sharmake Jama testified that he submitted fraudulent meal counts in person every month at Safari’s business headquarters at a historic Minneapolis mansion, per instructions from Salim Said.
Salim Said and other defendants in the case who are associated with Safari would take care of the rest, Sharmake testified. That included allegedly creating invoices that faked Brava Restaurant’s purchase of large amounts of food, and instructing Sharmake Jama and his family members to launder the federal funds through shell companies that each family member created.
Sharmake Jama pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud and money laundering in the Feeding Our Future case. Four of his family members have also pleaded guilty in the case for their work with Brava Restaurant. Sharmake admitted to using the federal money to buy a car, property in Turkey and two homes in the Twin Cities area and one Rochester.
The fraud involved the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) distributing funds from the federal child nutrition programs to sponsor organizations like Feeding Our Future. The money was distributed further to food vendors and food sites like Brava Restaurant that were supposed to serve ready-to-eat meals to children.
Some organizations allegedly reported serving more meals than they actually did in order to receive more federal money. Some never served any meals at all, prosecutors have said.
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Dressed in a light blue button shirt, tan slacks and a dark red bowtie, Sharmake Jama spoke quickly and directly in his testimony. Brava Restaurant, which he and his family had opened in 2016, had been going through hard times in 2020, shutting down for months because of COVID stay-at-home orders.
According to Sharmake Jama’s testimony: By the summer, he heard about an opportunity to reopen his restaurant by participating in the federal food program through Feeding Our Future. He drove up to the Twin Cities and visited the nonprofit’s office, only to find it closed due to pandemic restrictions. He saw a phone number on the door.
“I called and told them I had a restaurant in Rochester, and that I wanted to take part in this program,” Sharmake Jama testified.
A Feeding Our Future employee told Sharmake he qualified for the program, and allegedly directed him to Safari Restaurant.
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When he arrived at Safari Restaurant, he entered through the back door and found several people inside working, an unusual scene since most restaurants were either closed or only offering takeout to avoid spreading COVID.
He was eventually introduced to Salim Said, who led him into an office.
Salim Said called up Feeding Our Future, which eventually faxed him an application for the federal food program for Sharmake Jama to fill out. Salim Said faxed the completed form back to Feeding Our Future, and soon told Sharmake Jama that his application had been accepted.
Salim Said made another phone call to Feeding Our Future, and an employee told Sharmake Jama he would start the next day and that his limit was 5,000 meals.
Sharmake Jama testified that the 5,000 number of meals struck him as unusual, and that he didn’t know if that was how many meals he’d serve a day or over a longer period of time. When he tried to clarify with the Feeding Our Future employee, he said, the employee remained adamant about the 5,000 number. Sharmake Jama told him he needed time to scale up his restaurant’s operations.
“I told him if I start tomorrow there’s only one condition — if you bring a bus of 5,000 children down, I will start that day,” he testified.
That never happened, but Sharmake Jama testified that he would eventually start the program in October 2020 after buying equipment, advertising Brava’s role in offering free meals and getting Rochester Public Schools to notify parents that his restaurant would offer free meals to kids.
He started reporting that his restaurant was feeding 3,000 meals a day, admitting in court Wednesday that the amount of food he actually served was “nowhere near” that amount.
He received his first check from Feeding Our Future, which totaled more than $530,000, in December. That number grew until Brava received a check for more than $1.2 million in June 2021.
“Have you ever had anything close to that come to you in your life?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Ebert.
“Never,” Sharmake Jama replied.
At one point, Sharmake Jama said, Salim Said visited Brava and told him and his family members they could handle such a high volume of money by opening limited liability corporations.
Sharmake Jama told jurors Salim Said told them: “You guys are a family, you can split your business and share the money together.’”
He testified that his family followed the advice and opened multiple shell companies to manage the money.
Ebert showed him several invoices from Brava showing that the restaurant purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of food.
Sharmake Jama said he had never seen the invoices, and had never paid the amount of money shown. He alleged that people associated with Safari forged the invoices, which included purchasing 12,000 gallons of milk for $53,000. Brava could store a maximum of 400 gallons of milk.
“I believe that’s a scam,” Sharmake Jama testified. “I would never order it if I couldn’t hold it.”
Ebert also asked Sharmake Jama Wednesday about the alleged witness intimidation he experienced Tuesday in the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled Wednesday morning outside of the jury’s presence that such questioning was admissible; Bock and Salim Said’s attorneys protested the move.
Sharmake Jama told the jury Wednesday that Abdinasir Abshir, another defendant in the case, approached him in the hallway outside of the courtroom Tuesday afternoon and asked him to accompany him into the bathroom to talk. Sharmarke Jama was scheduled to testify on Tuesday, but didn’t begin testimony until Wednesday.
Sharmake Jama said he had previously seen Abdinasir Abshir outside of Safari’s headquarters. He testified that he didn’t know why Abdinasir Abshir approached him, and that he was caught by surprise.
“He was slurring his speech,” Sharmake Jama said. “I heard him say, ‘Can we talk? Can we talk in the bathroom?’”
He declined the invitation.
“Did it concern you?” Ebert asked.
“Yeah,” Sharmake Jama said. “If you were involved in the food program, you don’t want to talk.”
A U.S. Marshal was posted outside of the courtroom Wednesday to monitor activity in response to Tuesday’s alleged intimidation.
Testimony in the trial resumes Thursday morning.
