The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota announced on Friday, June 26 that 42-year-old Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, formerly of Burnsville, Minnesota, was arrested and taken into custody in Mogadishu, Somalia. Now, according to a recent Fox News report, U.S. federal law enforcement extradited Eidleh back to America on Thursday.
The Trump administration and its federal prosecutors allege that Eidleh was one of the masterminds behind the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme based in Minnesota that bilked $250 million out of taxpayers by falsely using the Federal Child Nutrition Program designed to feed underprivileged children. The scheme is believed to be one of the largest cons in the history of Minnesota, if not the United States.
Eidleh’s criminal history dates back to at least September 2022, when he and others involved with Feeding Our Future were indicted on 31 counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, federal programs bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The Justice Department alleges that Eidleh, as an employee of the Feeding Our Future (FOF) nonprofit, regularly engaged in soliciting and receiving bribes and kickbacks from individuals and organizations seeking ways to exploit Federal Child Nutrition Program sites. This was done for the purposes of establishing their own schemes centered around shell companies designed to create fraudulent meal program websites and centers.
Eidleh is accused of having created his own Federal Child Nutrition Program sites on behalf of himself and others. These sites claimed to feed thousands of children in the Minneapolis area each day, when in fact no such children or meal programs existed. Eidleh alone is believed to have deposited around $5 million in bribes, kickbacks, and outright theft from taxpayers into various shell companies in the U.S. and Somalia. When the Justice Department’s original indictment was released against Eidleh and others in the autumn of 2022, he fled the United States for Somalia, a nation that has long been in the grips of civil war, rampant criminality, jihadism, and widespread corruption.
The issue of fraud in Minneapolis became a national cause célèbre thanks to independent journalist Nick Shirley, who, in late 2025 and early 2026, made several videos documenting cases of fraud in the childcare industry. Specifically, Shirley’s videos highlighted several daycares, the most notable being the Future Leaders Early Learning Center located near Minneapolis’ George Floyd Square. The CEO of that daycare, Fahima Egeh Mahamud, was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy in May of this year. Mahamud allegedly stole $4.6 million from Minnesota taxpayers as part of yet another scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program using shell companies and non-existent children.
The Democratic Party and their backers excoriated Shirley as a conservative troublemaker and liar, with some even going so far as to accuse Shirley of pedophilia based on the idea that he had a sexual motivation to bring cameras into daycare centers. The Trump administration took a different view of Shirley’s work, and the Justice Department is currently months into a sweeping investigation of fraud and graft throughout the United States. Minneapolis and its large Somali community have been at the center of these investigations, and the extradition of Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh will likely serve to shed further light on this complex and lucrative world.
It is not yet known how many years Eidleh could be facing in prison should he be convicted, but back in May, Aimee Bock, the former head of the FOF nonprofit, was convicted on charges of fraud and sentenced to 42 years in prison.
