UMVA has learned that a woman allegedly tied to Minnesota's massive "Feeding Our Future" scandal has been charged in a daycare fraud scheme after being featured in a viral video by influencer Nick Shirley, authorities said.
She is accused of pocketing millions of dollars meant for children's meals, in a brazen scheme that has left authorities stunned. Fahima Egeh Mahamud was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States, court documents reveal.
Mahamud was already under indictment for her alleged role in the initial $250 million "Feeding Our Future" scheme. Prosecutors allege she enrolled Future Leaders Early Learning — a Minneapolis daycare where she served as CEO — into the federal child nutrition program, falsely claiming to serve thousands of meals at her childcare center.
In a shocking twist, Mahamud has been federally charged with a secondary scheme to defraud the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which provides daycare assistance to low-income families. She allegedly submitted over 13,000 fraudulent claims to CCAP totaling approximately $4.6 million.
The claims were fraudulent because she falsely certified that she had collected mandatory co-payments from families, a material requirement for federal reimbursement. This deceitful tactic allowed her to line her pockets with millions of dollars meant for vulnerable families.
The Future Leaders Early Learning center was featured in Shirley's viral video, which showed him visiting apparently empty, Somali-run childcare centers in and around Minneapolis while alleging widespread fraud. The video sparked an immediate and aggressive multiagency crackdown.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) froze roughly $185 million in federal childcare funding to Minnesota, and over 2,000 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were deployed to the Twin Cities to escalate investigations and enforcement.
