Somali former aide to Minneapolis mayor sentenced in Feeding Our Future fraud case

The former Somali-born aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been sentenced to serve three years in federal prison for his role in the Feeding Our Future fraud case.

Abdi Nur Salah was ordered on Thursday to spend 33 months behind bars for stealing $1.6 million in child nutrition funds as the operator of a fake food distributor in the Feeding Our Future fraud ring, the largest-known racket to exploit COVID-19 relief programming during the pandemic.

Salah, who worked as Frey’s senior policy aide from 2017 until he was named as a suspect in 2022, ran a nonprofit food distribution site called Stigma-Free International that fraudulently claimed to serve nearly 5 million meals to children over a one-year period through the use of forged attendance records and invoices.

In all, Salah and his accomplices raked in more than $10 million, which was meant to cover the cost of meals, based on bogus reimbursement claims they submitted to the federally funded meal delivery program.

Mugshot of Abdi Nur Salah (Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

Salah and his brother, Abdulkadir Nur Salah, the co-owner of a separate implicated meal site, both pled guilty in January 2025 to committing wire fraud just days before the two were scheduled to be jointly tried by a jury alongside Feeding Our Future’s founder, Aimee Bock.

According to court documents, Salah created multiple shell companies to launder his share of the fraud proceeds. Prosecutors say Salah spent the profits on real estate property in Minneapolis and various business ventures.

“Abdi Nur Salah and his co-conspirators used taxpayer money meant to support hungry children to buy themselves a life of luxury,” the FBI Minneapolis field office’s acting special agent in charge, Benni Jonsson, said in a statement. “In defrauding the Federal Child Nutrition Program of more than $1.6 million, what this defendant bought himself is a federal prison sentence.”

Salah is the 31st federal defendant sentenced in connection with the Feeding Our Future fraud network, an organized crime ring that overwhelmingly involved Somali immigrants from the Minneapolis area. Feeding Our Future, another Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization, acted as a program sponsor on behalf of Stigma-Free International and others run by operatives primarily of Somali origin. As an administrative fee, Feeding Our Future retained a 10-15% cut of the reimbursement checks.

In October 2020, Salah acquired Stigma-Free International to carry out the fraud scheme shortly after the Minnesota Department of Education, the state-level administrator of the federal food distribution program, announced it was no longer approving food sites run by restaurants and other for-profit catering companies.

“Abdi Nur Salah knew what that money was for. It was meant to feed children, and he helped turn it into his payday,” said Robert J. Kuszynski, the acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation’s Chicago field office. “Families counted on that program during a hard time, while he helped take from it. You can dress a scheme up as a nonprofit, but you can’t make the money trail disappear. Our special agents followed it, and today Salah answers for where it led.”

Salah departed Frey’s office on Feb. 17, 2022, the same day reporters at the Sahan Journal called a Frey spokesperson to inquire about federal court filings identifying the mayoral aide by name as a Feeding Our Future associate.

FEEDING OUR FUTURE MASTERMIND SAYS SOMALI ACCOMPLICES SCAMMED HER

The mayor’s spokesperson confirmed that Frey learned of the allegations against Salah through the Sahan Journal. “Abdi Salah is no longer an employee of Mayor Frey’s office,” the spokesperson said. “His last date of employment was today.”

In a Feb. 17 dismissal letter obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune, the mayor did not directly cite the federal investigation as the official reason why he was firing Salah.

Though his termination’s timing coincided with the federal investigation becoming public, Frey told Salah he was dismissing him for a series of administrative violations, including failure to disclose income outside his city government job and repeated failure to “make good on” a commitment to work in the office three days a week. Frey said Salah was “consistently missing important meetings with myself and city staff” and failing to produce written assignments on time.

Frey, a Democrat, was later listed on the government’s lineup of potential witnesses in the Feeding Our Future fraud trial against Bock and the Salah brothers. Prosecutors said they wanted to seek Frey’s testimony regarding the “City of Minneapolis’s Outside Employment Policy and other Ethics Regulations” as well as sworn statements from Frey “regarding Abdi Nur Salah’s work at the City of Minneapolis.” Frey, however, was never called upon to testify.

A spokesperson for Frey told KSTP-TV, “The Mayor is glad justice was served,” following Salah’s sentencing hearing.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is seen Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Between 2010 and 2021, Salah also served on several boards and commissions, including the Confederation of Somali Community and the city of Minneapolis’ racial equity committee, his attorney cited in a presentencing court filing.

“Given his stature in the Somali community and ability to speak Somali, Swahili and Arabic languages, he was a tremendous asset to city government,” Salah’s defense lawyer said.

U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Brasel, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said that Salah’s role as a government employee was an aggravating factor in her sentencing decision. “You were someone people looked up to,” she told Salah. “The community expected more from you.”

Salah was also arrested twice over the summer for drug-related offenses, and as part of his sentence, he will receive mental health resources and substance abuse treatment in prison.

In a statement to the court, Salah apologized to the public and the Minnesota immigrant community in particular. “I am sorry to our great people in the state of Minnesota,” the former owner of Stigma-Free International said, “and I’m sorry to every immigrant who gets stigmatized because of this.”

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