Feds Charge Somali Daycare Owner From Viral Video For Making Up Fake Kids

Federal prosecutors accused a Minneapolis daycare owner of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars by lying about the number of kids she was serving. 

The Justice Department charged Fahima Egeh Mahamud on Wednesday with wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States over a scheme involving the federally funded Child Nutrition Program and Child Care Assistance Program. In February, Mahamud was charged for her alleged role in the $250 million Feeding Our Future scam. 

Prosecutors said Wednesday that Mahamud “exploited changes in the program intended to ensure that underserved children received adequate nutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic to enrich herself by fraudulently misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal child nutrition program funds.” 

The Trump administration began probing the extent of apparent widespread fraud throughout Minneapolis daycare and autism centers after videos from independent journalist Nick Shirley went viral as he looked into questionable businesses. Mahamud was featured in one of those videos. 

Mahamud, who needs a Somali language interpreter at her court proceedings, ran the Minneapolis-based Future Leaders Early Learning Center, which participated in the federal nutrition program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future.

From January 2021 to July 2021, she received $854,000 in nutrition program funds for the daycare, and from October 2022 to December 2025, she was reimbursed over $4.6 million for childcare assistance claims, according to prosecutors. She is accused of not meeting requirements to collect co-payments for the childcare claims. 

Investigators say that Mahamud relied on fake meal counts, rosters, and invoices with “inflated figures” to submit her claims to the government and that she received funds that “substantially exceeded” the actual amount given to children. Mahamud’s operations served “only a fraction” of the tens of thousands of meals claimed, prosecutors said. 

Mahamud “diverted much of those taxpayer dollars for the purchase of real property, for the benefit of herself” and other companies associated with her, like Future Properties LLC and Minneapolis Autism Center Corp, according to investigators. 

Prosecutors say that Mahamud attempted to fly to London after she shut down the Future Leaders center in February amid federal scrutiny. She is currently under house arrest. 

Top Trump administration officials, including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are expected to travel to Minneapolis on Thursday morning to make an announcement on their efforts to crack down on fraud.