Defendant Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff arrives at the Diana E. Murphy federal courthouse in Minneapolis on the 14th day of testimony in the Feeding Our Future trial Friday, May 17, 2024. Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer.
The director and imam for the Dar Al-Farooq mosque in Bloomington testified Wednesday that they saw long lines of people get bags of food at the mosque during the pandemic, and believed Feeding Our Future defendants’ claims to have given out several thousand meals per day.
But an employee of a school in the mosque building and a mother who lives nearby and picked up food on Saturdays contradicted the witnesses, saying they only saw food distributed on Saturdays, not every day of the week.
The witnesses were all called to testify by the attorney for Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff, who is one of seven defendants charged in a Shakopee-based scheme to fraudulently get reimbursed $49 million in federal funds by vastly inflating the number of meals served. Prosecutors say they used the reimbursement money to buy luxury cars, houses, jewelry and property overseas — and very little food.
Six of the seven defendants told the court they are opting not to call witnesses or testify in their own defense. Shariff began testifying Wednesday about his background and journey to the United States and Minnesota. His testimony continues Thursday.
Dar Al-Farooq mosque is one of 50 sites statewide where the defendants are accused of claiming they gave out 18.8 million meals as part of a federal child nutrition program. The program’s regulations, which were supposed to be enforced by the state Department of Education, were eased during the pandemic to expedite food delivery.
The mosque’s director, Khalid Omar, and imam, Abdirahman Kariye, testified that they saw long lines of cars there to pick up bags of groceries. Omar said he wasn’t sure exactly how many people got food, but said thousands per day was accurate.
Kariye — who has been friends with defendant Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff for over 10 years and has traveled abroad with him extensively — said he believes it’s possible up to 3,500 people per day got food based on what he saw when he began serving as the imam in June 2021. He said many of the mosque’s members were out of work from low-income jobs, leading to widespread food insecurity.
Amina Adan, who lives near the mosque and knows Shariff as a member of the mosque community, testified that she used to pick up food on Saturdays, but couldn’t say whether people got food on the other days.
Abdikadir Haji, dean of the Success Academy, a charter school within the mosque, testified that he saw food distributed from a truck on Saturdays — but only Saturdays.
A nonprofit affiliated with the defendants claimed to serve 2,000 meals every day in January 2021, and that number grew to over 3,500 every day in November 2021. The FBI raided homes and offices in January 2022, unveiling the federal investigation, freezing accounts and ending state payments to defendants.
As the six other defendants’ attorneys said they would rest their case without calling witnesses, some jurors looked puzzled, given some of the attorneys repeatedly said they would call witnesses and show photos and videos of hordes of people getting food. Instead, the defense attorneys offered evidence of meal distributions while cross-examining prosecution witnesses.
When Shariff took the stand Wednesday, most of the jurors grabbed their pens and paper and began taking notes. Shariff testified about immigrating from Somalia to the U.S. as a boy, his upbringing on the East Coast, and his various jobs in software engineering before the trial adjourned for the day. He will continue testifying Thursday, along with another witness. Closing arguments could happen Friday and jury deliberations Monday.
Professor talks about how Somalis do business differently
On Wednesday, jurors also heard from a University of Minnesota professor who talked about how East African immigrants do business in less formal way and often send desperately needed money back to their home country.
Professor Paul Martin Baaler, who teaches at the university’s business and law schools, was hired by defense attorneys to share his expertise about diaspora businesses. Baaler explained why many East Africans create multiple limited liability corporations, hire each other as consultants and wire money overseas. In addition to the seven defendants currently on trial, another 63 have been charged, and most are of Somali ancestry. Eighteen have pleaded guilty.
In a kindly, gentle tone, the gray-haired professor gave the jury a lesson in Minnesota’s history of welcoming immigrants, from Vietnam and Liberia to Somalia and Ukraine.
Baaler said one reason he became interested in studying East Africans is that the Carlson School of Management abuts the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, which has long welcomed new Americans, including his Norwegian ancestors.
“I’m a fourth-generation Norwegian and my ancestors would’ve been in that same Cedar-Riverside community 100 years ago,” Baaler said. The nearby Norwegian Memorial Church, or Mindekirken, still holds a service in Norwegian, he said.
In Somalia, the civil war and attendant breakdown in institutions and lack of a secure banking system led to a more informal economy, with verbal contracts. Your word is your bond, and violations of trust are met with ostracization, he said.
Norwegian immigrants also had an aversion to insurance, which is how the Lutheran Brotherhood fraternal benefit society came to be, Baaler said.
For refugees, often their home country’s government was less a helping hand and more of a “grabbing hand” that would sweep through their bank accounts when there was a budget deficit, he said. Consequently, “there may be a preference for doing (business) outside the gaze of the government.”
Migrants tend to be entrepreneurial — about a quarter of all self-made businesses are founded by migrants, he said — both because they may have a harder time getting jobs in their new homes and because an entrepreneurial spirit is often required to survive in their home countries, too. East African migrants often juggle multiple businesses and open LLCs, sometimes long before starting a business.
Jurors took copious notes as he explained how Islamic law forbids financing — which is considered usury — so many Somalis are reluctant to use credit cards or finance purchases, and “cash is king.” Instead, they’ll often engage in profit-sharing agreements or lease agreements.
Baaler explained that immigrants often transfer money abroad — as is alleged in this case as part of money laundering allegations — to friends, family and business partners. Such “remittances” far exceed all other foreign aid, Baaler said.
“It’s the best foreign aid in the world because it doesn’t go through government,” he said.
It’s also not unusual for money to be sent by courier — in suitcases of cash — or for brokers to be repaid with goods, such as rice, shoes or bikes. It’s also common for migrants to go to community centers and find lawyers, accountants and “people who have made it” and hire them as consultants and advisors.
Some of the defendants created LLCs and billed each other as consultants.
Baaler didn’t analyze the evidence in the Feeding Our Future case, however, and under cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, he said those small remittances were not the same as wiring over a million dollars to build an apartment building in Kenya, as prosecutors allege happened in this case.
Baaler also acknowledged that sometimes people wire money abroad for relatives to hold for them, and that it’s illegal to send the proceeds of a crime abroad.
Cultural center was built
Jurors also heard from Jacob Steen, a lawyer who helped Shariff get property zoned for a cultural center called Afrique, which prosecutors allege was a shell company used to launder federal child nutrition funds.
Afrique emails and marketing materials that prosecutors previously showed jurors said the center would be buttressed by “large, consistent revenue” with high profit margins from the federal child nutrition program.
Steen and others testified that the East African event center was built — although its development was halted by the federal charges. It’s since been taken over by Yusef Ali and now operates as the Zawadi Center, which has a coffee shop, restaurant, event center and offices.
Ali testified he invested about a half million dollars to get the venture going last year, but didn’t know how Shariff financed the initial construction. Prosecutors allege over $900,000 came from federal food funds.
A sales consultant for Sysco also testified that Shariff bought over a $1 million worth of food and supplies from him in 2021 and 2022 for Afrique, and it was delivered weekly.
Shariff is sure to shed more light on that when he takes the stand again Thursday.
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