A 19th Feeding Our Future guilty plea on the horizon?

Court filings entered this week in the Feeding Our Future fraud case suggest that a 19th guilty plea may be entered next month.

As you recall, some 70 defendants have been charged, so far, in the sprawling free-food scandal. To date, five have been convicted at trial and 18 have been convicted through guilty pleas.

Yesterday, a notice was entered in the record of Defendant No. 28 in the case, Abdullahe Nur Jesow, of Columbia Heights, for a possible change of plea hearing.

We write in the conditional because this case has already seen one instance where a defendant filed notice of a guilty plea, only to change his mind and fire his lawyers instead.

More significantly, in this case, Jesow’s name is conspicuously absent from a scheduling order issued today in the case, charting out the interim deadlines leading up to the expected trial start date of October 2025 (2025 is not a typo).

Jesow, then aged 62, was indicted in the case almost two years ago, along with seven other defendants, as part of the S&S Catering group.

Over the years, five defendants have pled guilty (Guilty Pleas Nos. 4, 11, 13, 14, and 15) from this group, including the lead defendant, Qamar Hassan.

Should Jesow plead guilty, that leaves only two defendants left of the original eight to stand trial in October of next year. The most prominent name of this final pair is Guhaad Hashi Said, a figure closely linked to Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

The original indictment links Jesow to a nonprofit, Academy for Youth Excellence, located at this commercial building on East Lake Street in South Minneapolis.

That commercial block is among the properties already seized and sold off by Federal authorities in the case.

The food distribution site linked to Jesow was listed as having a summer capacity to serve up to 1,000 children and a school-year capacity of 1,500 children.

State records link Jesow to a second nonprofit operating at that address, Hope Academy for Youth and Woman Empowerment. The Hope nonprofit was separately listed as having the capacity to serve 500 children.

The indictment (p. 30) accuses Jesow of using $100,000 in proceeds from the case towards the purchase of a residential property in Columbia Heights. That property is subject to forfeiture in the case.

It’s been reported that the guilty plea will be entered later in August.