Bloomington woman pleads guilty to laundering money for son in Feeding Our Future fraud

A Bloomington woman admitted to laundering money in the Feeding Our Future case after being unknowingly drawn into the multi-million dollar fraud.

Farhiya Mohamud, 65, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to one count of money laundering. According to her plea deal, the prosecution and defense agree that Farhiya was not involved in or aware of the broader scheme to defraud the federal government of $250 million in funds meant to feed underprivileged children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the agreement says that Farhiya should have known that the large amounts of money she received from other defendants in the case were “criminally derived.”

Farhiya admitted in court that her son, Sharmarke Issa, who also pleaded guilty in the case, directed her to buy real estate for him using money she received from co-defendants Haji Salad and Fahad Nur. The plea agreement says she wired $300,000 from one bank account and $184,308 from another to go toward a $785,000 home for her son. Her guilty plea relates to the $184,308 transfer.

Farhiya will be sentenced at a later date. The prosecution and defense plan to jointly recommend a one-year sentence that will consist of probation instead of prison time, but a judge will ultimately decide the terms of her sentencing.

“The United States government has acknowledged in writing that my client was unaware of and uninvolved in the fraud against the federal nutritional program,” Farhiya’s attorney, John Conard told reporters after the hearing. “She obviously feels a lot of shame having been caught up in this, just given her background and the values that she has.”

According to the plea agreement, Farhiya was chief executive officer of Dua Supplies and Distribution Inc., which she created in 2020. Dua Supplies was created to supply food to customers, including Haji and Fahad, who were then supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to children.

“You actually were not supplying them with these large amounts of food, is that right?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Ebert asked Farhiya Thursday.

“Yes,” Farhiya replied.

Prosecutors have said the fraud began with the Minnesota Department of Education distributing federal food-aid money to the nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care, which distributed it further to food vendors and sites that were supposed to feed children.

Some organizations along the chain allegedly reported serving more meals than they actually did in order to receive more federal money. Some never served any meals at all despite claiming that they had.

Farhiya, Sharmarke, Haji and Fahad were originally charged along with five others under one indictment, and were scheduled to go to trial together in November. Farhiya was the eighth defendant in that case to plead guilty. Fahad fled the country in 2022 and is considered a fugitive.

Farhiya is the 23rd defendant in the case to plead guilty. Her son, Sharmarke, 42, pleaded guilty last month to personally making $3.6 million in profits from the fraud.

Sharmarke served as board chair of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) for nearly three years, and resigned from the board in 2022 after a building he co-owned was linked to the fraud. He admitted to defrauding the federal government out of $7.6 million between June 2020 and the early months of 2022.

Sharmarke ran a company called Minnesota’s Somali Community, which operated several food sites. He also operated a restaurant that served as a food site and ran several shell companies that participated in the scheme, including one with his mother.

Authorities have said the Feeding Our Future case is the largest coordinated pandemic fraud scheme in the country. Federal prosecutors charged 70 defendants in the case.

The next trial in the case is scheduled to begin in February. The defendants in that joint trial include Aimee Bock, the former executive director of Feeding Our Future.