A defendant in the Feeding Our Future case pleaded guilty to wire fraud Friday and admitted to attempted witness tampering, the Department of Justice announced.
The fraud scheme’s alleged ringleader, Aimee Bock, is currently standing trial in downtown Minneapolis with co-defendant Salim Said. The trial, now wrapping up its fifth week, was rocked by allegations of possible witness tampering last month.
In his guilty plea entered Friday, Abdinasir Mahamed Abshir, 33, acknowledged that an enhancement will apply to his sentence because he obstructed justice when he attempted to tamper with a witness.
According to the DOJ, Abshir approached a cooperating witness outside the courtroom where Bock’s trial is taking place. After learning the witness was about to testify, Abshir requested that the witness come with him to the bathroom to have a conversation.
“I’ve had it with the shenanigans in this case,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said in court last month when he learned of the witness tampering allegations, referencing an attempted bribe in the last Feeding Our Future trial.
“Differences in Somali culture do not excuse attempts to monkey around with and corrupt our criminal justice system,” he added after one of the defense attorneys attributed the incident to cultural practices.
Abshir also admitted to his role in the Feeding Our Future scheme in his guilty plea. He operated a food site called Stigma-Free Mankato under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship and claimed to be serving 3,000 children a day, seven days a week, from a small restaurant in North Mankato.
He and his co-conspirators falsely claimed to have served approximately 1.6 million meals to children in just a year’s time through Stigma-Free Mankato. They did this by submitting fake meal counts, invoices and attendance rosters.
Abshir also paid more than $100,000 in bribes and kickbacks through a shell company to a Feeding Our Future employee in exchange for the organization’s sponsorship of his food site. He also paid $5,750 to a GoFundMe account for Feeding Our Future created by Bock.
In total, Stigma-Free Mankato received over $5.4 million in payments from Feeding Our Future based on fraudulent claims. Abshir is the 37th defendant to plead guilty.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
