Mogadishu, Somalia — A 42-year-old Minnesota man identified as a core conspirator in one of the largest public fraud schemes in U.S. Midwest history has been apprehended by authorities after years as a fugitive, U.S. federal law enforcement officials confirmed Friday.
Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, a resident of Burnsville, Minnesota, was taken into custody on Thursday in Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced in an official media statement. As of the latest update, court records have not listed any legal representation for Eidleh, and he has not yet appeared before a judicial officer to enter a plea to the charges against him.
Eidleh is among more than 40 individuals indicted back in 2022 for their alleged roles in a coordinated, multi-million dollar scam targeting a U.S. federal child nutrition program launched to support vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 public health crisis. At the center of the scheme was Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota-based non-profit that publicly claimed it would use federal funding to distribute millions of free meals to food-insecure children across the state when pandemic school closures disrupted access to regular school nutrition services.
Court filings lay out damning allegations that only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars allocated to the organization actually went toward feeding children in need. Prosecutors say the vast majority of the funds were illegally siphoned off through a network of dummy shell companies, then laundered to fund personal luxuries for the conspirators: high-end residential and commercial real estate purchases, luxury vehicles, and extravagant international vacations.
As a former employee of Feeding Our Future, Eidleh is accused of taking on a central coordinating role in the fraud. Court documents allege he helped create dozens of fake program meal sites, falsified daily attendance and meal distribution records that claimed the sites were serving thousands of children every day, and set up the fraudulent shell companies that were listed as official meal vendors for the non-existent sites. The grand jury indictment brings six separate types of charges against him, totaling 31 counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, substantive wire fraud violations, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, substantive bribery charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and substantive money laundering charges.
Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, emphasized the severity of the alleged crimes in public comments following the capture. “Eidleh was a central figure in one of the largest fraud schemes in Minnesota history,” McDonald said. “He not only stole taxpayer dollars, but he also robbed vulnerable children of critical resources they desperately needed. Rather than answer for his crimes in the United States, he fled to Somalia in a futile attempt to evade justice.”
The high-profile fraud case has already spilled over into national political discourse. Former U.S. President Donald Trump cited the case as a key justification when he announced a sweeping immigration crackdown targeting the state of Minnesota in late 2023, framing the scam as evidence of weak border security and lax enforcement that enabled large-scale public corruption.