Former Ilhan Omar Associate Pleads Guilty in $2.9 Million Fraud Scheme
This has been a brutal week for Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.
A former campaign associate of Omar has pleaded guilty to participating in a multi-million-dollar pandemic food fraud conspiracy, adding another chapter to the growing list of controversies surrounding the progressive lawmaker’s political orbit.
Federal prosecutors announced that 49-year-old Guhaad Hashi Said — described by Alpha News as an “enforcer” for Omar’s campaign — admitted in court to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The charges stem from a wide-ranging fraud targeting a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The conviction many in the Feeding Our Future case is yet another reminder of the vast reach of this fraud and the scale of the crisis we face in Minnesota,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said in a statement. “These crimes are not isolated events. They are part of a web of schemes targeting programs that are intended to lift up Minnesotans and bleeding them dry. From where I sit, the scale of the fraud in Minnesota is staggering, and every rock we turn over reveals more. We must be honest and clear-eyed about the scope of this problem, because ending it will take an unyielding, all-hands-on-deck effort from all of us.”
According to court documents, between December 2020 and January 2022, Said exploited the Federal Child Nutrition Program, falsely claiming his nonprofit — Advance Youth Athletic Development — was serving thousands of meals daily to underprivileged children. Incorporated in February 2021, the organization was registered to a residential apartment in the Central Avenue Lofts in Minneapolis.
Beginning in March 2021, Said submitted meal count sheets claiming to have served 5,000 meals per day. From March through December of that year, he claimed to have served more than 1 million meals — but in reality provided only a fraction of that number. Prosecutors say he fabricated meal counts, attendance rosters, and invoices to secure reimbursements.
The scheme brought in roughly $2.9 million in federal funds. Between August and December 2021, Said transferred more than $2.1 million from his organization’s bank accounts to a catering business, ostensibly for food purchases, while using other proceeds to buy real estate, cars, and personal items through a network of shell nonprofits and LLCs.
Said now faces up to 25 years in federal prison when sentenced. He previously ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018.
While Omar herself has not been implicated in the Feeding Our Future scandal, the conviction comes against a backdrop of past ethical and political controversies tied to the congresswoman.
This week, federal officials made a shocking announcement: Almost half of all immigrants in the greater Minneapolis area were determined to have committed some kind of immigration fraud.
Joseph Edley, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said that the fraud found in a September sweep included false death certificates, fake marriages, and “other strange schemes.”
But for those of us who have been following the settling of some 100,000 Somali immigrants in Minnesota over the past 30 years, this news was not a big surprise.
The State Department stopped one of the Somali immigrant family reunification programs in 2008 because DNA testing of applicants showed that 80% of the familial links they claimed were fraudulent.
This community has a lot of immigration fraud.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is a great example of a “bizarre scheme.”
Omar is accused of marrying her brother to provide him with legal documents, and she has never convincingly refuted it.
In 2016, I followed up on a tip that was posted on a local Somali discussion board and found out that Omar, who was running for the Minnesota state legislature for the first time, had “religiously married” Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her children, but not legally married him.
But records showed that she had officially married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Somalis on the discussion board said that he was her brother.
Omar was still married to Elmi when she ran for state government in 2016, but her website didn’t say anything about him and said Hirsi was her husband.
Omar seemed to have married her brother for a dishonest reason.
Wilecia Harris, a Christian priest, signed the Omar-Elmi marriage certificate, even though the couple was Muslim. This made the hoax much worse.
When I asked the Omar campaign about her marriages, a criminal defense lawyer sent me a message accusing me of being racist and not answering my inquiries.
Even now, it’s not apparent why she married Elmi, even though she says they broke up in 2011 and their marriage didn’t officially cease until 2017.
