20th, 21st guilty pleas entered in Feeding Our Future. 22nd is on the way.
No. 20, Haji Salad, has ties to a controversial Lakeville housing development.
It was a busy week for the Feeding Our Future case at the Federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. Guilty pleas Nos. 19, 20, and 21 were entered in the sprawling free-food scandal, a case that involves some 70 defendants in total. Five additional convictions were obtained at trial earlier this year, with an additional two guilty pleas entered in a related juror bribery case.
All three guilty pleas entered this week were associated with the Haji’s Kitchen group of defendants.
Up first, Minneapolis DFL political appointee Sharmarke Issa (defendant No. 34) entered his plea on Wednesday, which I covered here.
Next up on Thursday was Haji Salad, Defendant No. 31, and the lead figure of the group. Joey Peters of the Sahan Journal reports that Salad admitted to stealing $19 million from the free-food programs. Salad kept more than $11 million for himself.
About half a million was sunk into a controversial proposed Lakeville housing development, which I wrote about here. A company named Nolosha wants to develop a triangle-shaped, 37-acre parcel near I-35.
The problem arises with the current owners of the parcel. From the Haji’s Kitchen indictment,
A similar fact is included in the indictment of Ayan Abukar, Defendant No. 58 (she has pled not guilty),
So, this same parcel of land is subject to forfeiture proceedings arising from two criminal cases now in Federal court. According to Dakota County property records, the parcel is listed under the name of another Abukar family member.
Unrelated to the Feeding Our Future case, Nolosha itself is under investigation by the state Attorney General’s office and the FBI for fraud related to the Lakeville project, according to the Sahan Journal. Despite all this, Nolosha claims that they are still on track to purchase the property in November.
As for Salad himself, he faces five to six years in prison under the plea deal filed yesterday. A number of news outlets have noted Salad’s connection to a notorious 2010 Nashville criminal case, later dismissed by a court of appeals.
Salad’s plea agreement (page 5, paragraph 5) notes that his conviction in this case could impact his immigration status, up to and including his deportation.
On Friday morning, Khadra Abdi, Defendant No. 57, also entered a guilty plea. Her involvement centered on her Hopkins tutoring company,
In her plea agreement this morning, Abdi admitted to taking $3.2 million out of the free-food program, keeping $462,000 for herself. Under the agreement, she faces around three years in prison. The Star Tribune reported that Abdi, aged 42, required a language interpreter for today’s hearing.
The official court calendar shows another change of plea hearing is scheduled for a Haji group defendant at the end of the month. Kawsar Jama (defendant No. 54) would become Guilty Plea No. 22 if all goes according to plan on September 30.
That would leave only one remaining defendant from the Haji group (of the original nine) to stand trial beginning in early November. At that point seven would have pled guilty with one final defendant having fled the country.