Woman pleads guilty to day care fraud — and also ran Feeding Our Future scam and autism center

The woman who was at the center of the viral fraud investigation by Nick Shirley has pleaded guilty to fraud related to a Minneapolis day care she owned.

Prosecutors say 50-year-old Fahima Mahamud owned the Future Leaders Early Learning Center and charged the federal government $854,000 in reimbursements for the Feeding Our Future scam.

She also fraudulently claimed to have provided up to 60,000 meals for needy children on a monthly basis during the scam.

Rather than use the money to feed needy children, she used the vast majority of the ill-gotten gains to buy real estate. Among those purchases was an autism center that billed the federal government $3.1 million over the last five years.

She billed the federal government for child-care expenses as part of the Child Care Assistance Program and was able to scam $4.6 million from the government.

Mahamud pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, but a sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

Prosecutors said she booked a flight to London in February immediately after alerting the state that her learning center was shutting down.

News video footage from KARE-TV showed Mahamud walking into the courthouse while wearing full-body Islamic garb that covered her face as well.

Mahamud received the largest amount of reimbursement from the Child Care Assistance Program, which totaled about $4.6 million, after submitting over 13,000 fraudulent claims from 2022 until Dec. 2025.

RELATED: Top scammer of 'Feeding Our Future' fraud in Minnesota NAILED with painful sentence

She also fraudulently claimed to have provided up to 60,000 meals for needy children on a monthly basis during the scam.

Mahamud did not respond to requests for comment from a KARE reporter at the courthouse.