Feeding Our Future defendant sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in prison
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The latest defendant to be sentenced in the sprawling Feeding Our Future fraud case is headed to federal prison for 17-and-a-half years. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel imposed the 210-month term for Mukhtar Shariff at a hearing Friday after a jury in June convicted Shariff and four others at a trial where several defendants allegedly tried to bribe a juror.
Jurors found that Shariff helped siphon around $47 million from government child nutrition programs for children in need during the pandemic.
Shariff, 34, moved to the Twin Cities from Seattle in late 2020 and started Afrique Hospitality Group, described as a community and cultural center in Bloomington. But instead Shariff used the business as a front for stealing and laundering millions of taxpayer dollars.
Like others convicted in the case, Shariff requested reimbursement for food that he never served. Soon after opening Afrique, Shariff immediately submitted fraudulent claims for serving 2,000 and shortly afterward, 3,500 children every day, seven days a week at a nearby mosque.
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Lead prosecutor Joe Thompson, who requested a 22-year sentence, said in court Friday that Shariff “committed and participated in the single largest COVID-19 fraud that’s been charged in the United States, full stop.” Thompson added that Shariff “was up to his eyeballs in this fraud scheme.”
Shariff was the only defendant to waive his Fifth Amendment rights and testify at the trial, where he tried to present Afrique as a legitimate business. But that opened him up to cross examination.
In late May, Thompson confronted Shariff with dozens of pictures of five and six figure checks paid to his businesses. Many were from other defendants, but Shariff claimed not to know what the money was for.
In arguing for a lengthy prison term, Thompson said that Shariff repeatedly and deliberately lied in an effort to trick the jury, and even recruited a friend to testify falsely that he saw Shariff serving thousands of meals to children.
At the sentencing hearing, defense attorney Andrew Mohring downplayed his client’s role in the scheme and argued that Shariff should only be held accountable for the losses for which he was directly responsible, not the actions of the entire group.
Mohring said that Shariff “didn't devise the scheme. He didn’t determine the size of the claims. There’s not a child who went hungry because of Mukhtar Shariff.”
Thompson countered that under conspiracy law, each member of the group is responsible for their collective actions.
“If you’re the lookout for the bank robber you’re just as guilty as your co-conspirator who goes in and robs the bank,” Thompson said.
In arguing for a prison term of six to seven years, Mohring noted that Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO of Enron who was convicted in a major corporate fraud scandal in the early 2000s, ultimately received a 14-year sentence.
Mohamed Ismail, the first Feeding Our Future defendant to be sentenced, received a 12-year term in October.
The trial ended in dramatic fashion after a juror reported that someone dropped a Hallmark gift bag at her home containing $120,000 and promised more cash in exchange for an acquittal. The young woman called 911 and Brasel replaced her with an alternate juror.
Prosecutors later charged five people, including three of the trial defendants, in a separate jury bribery indictment.
Shariff was not charged with bribery, but prosecutors argued that he knew about the plot and deleted video evidence of it from his phone just after Brasel ordered all of the defendants to hand their devices over to FBI agents in the courtroom.
Thompson argued that this action warranted an enhanced sentence for obstruction of justice, and Brasel agreed.
“You were 10 feet from multiple FBI agents and you had the temerity to delete an application with your messages that you believed would show guilt,” Brasel said. “That lack of respect for the law is like nothing I have ever seen.”
For his part, Shariff gave a lengthy apology and said that his actions let down his family and the wider Somali-American community.
But Brasel told Shariff that his words of remorse differed dramatically from his trial testimony in May, where he claimed little knowledge of the conspiracy. The judge said that testimony was "not credible."
Dozens of Shariff's supporters packed into the courtroom and an overflow room.
After pronouncing the sentence, Brasel had to call for order when one supporter banged on a seat and others stood up. One person called out “no justice.”
Shariff was among 70 people charged in what federal prosecutors say was a much broader scheme to fleece taxpayers out of $250 million.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are preparing for the second trial to stem from the investigation. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Feb. 3 in the trial of Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock, Salim Ahmed Said, Abdulkadir Nur Salah, and his brother Abdi Nur Salah.
Because of the bribe attempt, Brasel ordered additional measures to protect jurors during the second trial.
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