A St. Paul man who formerly worked as an aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for COVID child nutrition grant theft totaling approximately $1.6 million.
Abdi Nur Salah was sentenced on Thursday after pleading guilty in January 2025 to his role in the $240 million Feeding Our Future fraud conspiracy. He is the 31st individual to be convicted for fraud crimes related to the Minnesota nonprofit.
Salah, who KSTP claims was ousted from his position in the mayor’s office when the allegations against him were made public in 2022, and other collaborators ran a nonprofit meal site called Stigma-Free International, which collaborated with Feeding Our Future.
After the Minnesota Department of Education decided that restaurants and for-profit companies could no longer run food sites, Salah founded Stigma-Free as a charity organization, claiming to offer meals to children during the COVID pandemic.
“Salah transferred ownership of Stigma-Free International to his co-conspirators, who used it to open a number of new Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout Minnesota, including in Willmar, Mankato, St. Cloud, Waite Park, and St. Paul,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Minnesota stated in a press release on Thursday.
Salah’s co-conspirators claimed to have served nearly five million meals to children through Stigma-Free facilities between November 2020 and November 2021, with Feeding Our Future providing the sites with over $10 million in federal reimbursements.
Salah was accused of setting up various shell companies “to receive and launder his share of the fraud proceeds,” enriching himself with more than $1.6 million spent on residences, real estate, and businesses.
“Abdi Nur Salah and his co-conspirators used taxpayer money meant to support hungry children to buy themselves a life of luxury,” stated FBI Minneapolis Field Office Acting Special Agent in Charge Benni Jonsson.
“In cheating the Federal Child Nutrition Program of more than $1.6 million, this criminal earned himself a federal jail sentence. We will continue to prosecute criminals and protect American taxpayers.”
Leave a Reply