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Federal fraud charges were unsealed Wednesday against a Minnesota daycare proprietor who prosecutors allege tried to fly the state conscionable 2 days aft shutting the daycare halfway down.
Federal prosecutors said Future Leaders Early Learning — a tract sponsored by Feeding Our Future — pretended to provender children during the pandemic, but pocketed overmuch of the wealth instead.
Fahima Mahamud, the daycare's owner, was charged with 1 number each of ligament fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States done Minnesota's Child Care Assistance Program, oregon CCAP, according to a national indictment unsealed Wednesday. Mahamud is presently nether location arrest.
She is accused of stealing payer wealth that was meant to assistance families provender their children. Prosecutors allege her halfway astatine 1 constituent was claiming to service 60,000 children monthly and falsifying invoices to warrant reimbursement.
Fahima Mahamud
U.S. Attorney's Office
Between January and July of 2021, her daycare halfway received much than $850,000 successful Federal Child Nutrition Program funds straight from Feeding Our Future — a nonprofit radical that is astatine the center of what national authorities person called a $250 cardinal fraud scandal — but lone a fraction was utilized to acquisition food, according to an indictment obtained Wednesday.
In 2020 and 2021, Mahamud submitted receipts claiming to person served 2 meals a time to 1,000 antithetic children, 7 days a week, the tribunal documents state.
And from 2022 to 2025, Mahamud submitted astir 13,000 claims for $4.6M successful reimbursements done CCAP "on behalf of recipients from whom co-payments were not collected arsenic required," the indictment alleges.
The Future Leaders Early Learning Center was 1 of 10 Minneapolis daycares visited by blimpish YouTuber Nick Shirley successful December and featured successful a viral video. State licence investigators had besides visited the tract connected Nov. 10, 2025, and issued a citation for the abstraction not being cleanable and children's files not containing immunization documentation.
In February, Mahamud notified the authorities that Future Leaders Early Learning was closing. That aforesaid day, prosecutors accidental she booked a formation to London.
In April, astatine slightest 20 Minnesota daycares and autism centers were raided by national agents. It's unclear if Future Leaders Early Learning Center was 1 of them.
So far, astir 100 radical person been charged in the Feeding Our Future scheme. The Justice Department said Wednesday that it would clasp a quality league Thursday greeting to denote a "major instrumentality enforcement enactment involving fraud" successful Minnesota. Among those taking portion successful the lawsuit would beryllium acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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