Safari Restaurant prepared and served 5,000 meals a day to children during the COVID-19 pandemic, testified former co-owner Salim Said.
Salim Said’s testimony Monday under direct questioning from his attorney, Andrian Montez, contradicted evidence prosecutors previously presented at his federal fraud trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson gave a tense cross-examination of Salim Said, at one point accusing him of lying on the witness stand.
Salim Said described working long days, seven days a week in 2020 to serve free food to his community. He described cooks starting their days as early as 4 a.m., and a social media contractor who let the community know when and where the food was available.
He testified that Safari delivered thousands of meals a day to families in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, and paid two off-duty police officers to manage car traffic from parents picking up food at his Minneapolis restaurant.
“The line was so long, man,” Salim Said testified. “A lot of people needed food.”
His testimony contrasted with the case prosecutors presented over the past six weeks that attempted to show that he was one of the biggest offenders in a $250 million fraud scheme. He is one of 70 defendants charged in the case.
Salim Said testified as jurors were shown pictures and videos depicting several trays of food at Safari Restaurant during the pandemic. Each tray, he told the court, contained five to six meals.
One picture showed six black boxes containing a total of 60 trays of food that equaled 300 meals, according to Salim Said. They were all delivered to Riverside Plaza in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, he testified. He estimated that Safari delivered 2,000 to 3,000 meals to families in the neighborhood every day.
Thompson hammered Salim Said on the accuracy of his claims. He showed a map of the neighborhood, and noted that Feeding Our Future sponsored several food sites in that neighborhood that purported to serve 1.9 million meals over an 18-month period.
Thompson read off the food sites’ names, asking Salim Said if he was aware of them. No, he answered each time.
“Cedar-Riverside, ask anyone there, they’ll all tell you Safari served meals there,” Salim Said testified. “All those things, those businesses you’re asking me about, I’ve never heard of.”
At the end of the day, Thompson noted how Salim Said and others spent $2 million on a mansion on Park Avenue in south Minneapolis, and said he hadn’t spent the same amount of money on food. Salim Said said that he spent the same amount on food.
“Don’t sit there and lie to the jury,” Thompson said in front of the jury.
The jurors were immediately dismissed, and outside of their presence, Montez asked U.S. District Judge Brasel to strike Thompson’s comment from the court record. Thompson argued that Salim Said’s comment implied that the government was hiding evidence.
Brasel ruled against Montez, saying that Salim Said was opening himself up to tough questioning by deciding to take the stand.
$30 million theft
Federal prosecutors allege that the businesses Salim Said worked with fraudulently collected around $30 million of federal food-aid money that was supposed to feed children during the pandemic. Salim Said allegedly received $5.5 million for himself, using it to buy a $1 million mansion in Plymouth and several luxury cars.
He faces several criminal charges: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, four counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, eight counts of bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering and five counts of money laundering.
He is on trial with Feeding Our Future’s former executive director, Aimee Bock, the alleged mastermind behind the fraud. Bock completed testimony in her case last week.
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 Safari Restaurant, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children during the pandemic.
Working through Feeding Our Future, several organizations reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did, or never served any at all, in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors.
Salim Said also testified under cross-examination that he created Salim Limited, which prosecutors allege was a shell company to launder money, on instructions from Safari Restaurant’s other co-owner, Abdulkadir Salah. Salim Said denied that Salim Limited was a shell company, and said Abdulkadir Salah told him that banks would want him to put his profits into a limited liability company instead of his personal bank account.
He testified that Abdulkadir Salah worked as his accountant, and prepared several checks for him to sign. Abdulkadir Salah was originally scheduled to stand trial with Salim Said, but pleaded guilty to wire fraud in January before trial.
Salim Said also said Abdulkadir Salah instructed him to give regular checks to Feeding Our Future employee Abdikerm Eidleh. He denied that they were kickback payments in exchange for enrollment in the federal food program. Instead, Salim Said said, he raised concerns about paying Abdikerm Eidleh.
“I called Abdulkadir and asked, ‘Why do you have a check for Eidleh who works for Feeding Our Future?’” Salim Said testified. “He said, ‘He’s a contractor with Feeding Our Future, he can work with us.’”
Thompson emphasized that Salim Said would send regular emails to Abdikerm Eidleh’s Feeding Our Future email account.
“You would email him meal claims?” Thompson asked, referring to documentation of the number of meals Safari Restaurant reported serving.
“Yes,” Salim Said responded.
“Because he worked for Feeding Our Future, correct?” Thompson asked.
“Yes,” Salim Said responded.
Adbikerm Eidleh, who is charged in the case, is currently an international fugitive.
Salim Said was also co-owner of ASA Limited, a food site in St. Paul that purported to serve 3,000 meals a day made by Safari Restaurant. But Salim Said distanced himself from ASA Limited in his testimony, saying instead that he was an investor who helped get the company off the ground, but didn’t handle day-to-day operations.
He said that he and Abdihakim Ahmed, another defendant in the case, opened ASA Limited to serve the large number of Somali residents who lived nearby who had been traveling to Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis. Abdihakim Ahmed’s case is pending.
Salim Said said that at a point in the pandemic, he stopped working at Safari Restaurant and went to work at the Park Avenue mansion the restaurant used as headquarters under the name, Cosmopolitan Business Solutions. Prosecutors allege that Salim Said and others bought the mansion with federal food money and used it to create several fake food sites, including many under the name Stigma-Free International.
Salim Said testified that he left the restaurant to spend more time with his two young kids, and worked as an investor for Cosmopolitan Business Solutions.
Thompson noted that Salim Said paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get several food sites up and running, knowing that they were going to make millions of dollars.
“I invest money to make money,” Salim Said said.
“You were making $1 million a month at Safari,” Thompson said. “You knew you would get a similar return for ASA Limited.”
Salim Said said he didn’t know how many people would show up each day.
Thompson then asked about the four Stigma-Free International food sites inWillmar, St. Paul, Mankato and the St. Cloud area that Safari Restaurant claimed to supply food to.
“I don’t know anything about Stigma-Free,” he said, saying again that he was only an investor.
Thompson emphasized that Stigma-Free’s Willmar location claimed to feed the equivalent of three-quarters of the city’s entire school district.
“Yes, but there are small towns all around,” Salim Said said. “People would go out and deliver food.”
“Were you there?” Thompson asked.
“No, but that’s what people would say, and I saw the videos from Liban,” he said, referring to Safari Restaurant’s social media employee.
Salim Said also distanced himself from allegedly faked rosters of children that were emailed to him. At one point, Thompson showed an Excel document for one of the rosters showing that it used a formula to randomly generate ages for children that were reportedly served.
“There’d be no reason to do this if they were real kids, correct?” Thompson asked.
“You’re going to have to ask the person that did this,” Salim Said responded.
Thompson is expected to finish cross-examining Salim Said Tuesday morning. Closing arguments will be heard afterwards, with jury deliberations to follow.
