Federal prosecutors accused Mahamud of stealing more than $4.6 million through the Child Care Assistance Program by submitting roughly 13,000 reimbursement claims.
A Minneapolis daycare owner whose facility was featured in a viral fraud investigation video by independent journalist Nick Shirley has pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Fahima Egeh Mahamud, the former CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center near George Floyd Square, admitted to submitting fraudulent claims through Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program and the federal child nutrition program connected to the sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal, per CBS News.
Federal prosecutors accused Mahamud of stealing more than $4.6 million through the Child Care Assistance Program by submitting roughly 13,000 reimbursement claims between 2022 and 2025. Prosecutors said the claims were made “on behalf of recipients from whom co-payments were not collected as required.”
Mahamud was also accused of defrauding the federal nutrition program through Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of what federal authorities have described as a massive pandemic-era fraud scheme. Prosecutors said Future Leaders Early Learning claimed to be serving thousands of meals to children, including paperwork alleging the center served two meals a day to 1,000 children, seven days a week.
Between January and July 2021, the daycare received more than $850,000 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds, but prosecutors said only a fraction of the money was actually used to buy food.
The case gained renewed attention after Shirley’s December video spotlighted suspicious daycare operations in Minnesota. Future Leaders Early Learning Center was one of 10 Minneapolis daycares featured in the video, which prompted state officials to conduct checks at daycare facilities across Minnesota. State records show Future Leaders closed in January.
Prosecutors alleged that Mahamud notified the state in February that the center was closing and booked a flight to London that same day. She was later placed under house arrest. Mahamud was released on a conditional bond while a presentence report is prepared. Her plea agreement reportedly includes an estimated sentencing range of 27 to 33 months in prison, though the final sentence will be determined by a federal judge. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
The guilty plea comes as federal investigators continue to pursue cases tied to Minnesota’s public-benefits fraud scandals. Nearly 100 people have been charged in the Feeding Our Future case, which prosecutors have said involved defendants billing the government for meals that were never served to children.
The broader Minnesota fraud controversy has also drawn national scrutiny. A March letter from the House Energy and Commerce Committee said “recent reports and law enforcement actions have exposed unprecedented levels of Medicaid fraud in the State of Minnesota and other states,” citing schemes involving “overbilling, falsifying records, identity theft, and phantom claims” in public programs for vulnerable populations.
The committee warned that similar vulnerabilities could exist in other states and said Medicaid fraud investigators had testified that fraud schemes increasingly cross state lines.
The Minnesota daycare case has also become part of a broader fight over independent journalism, with critics arguing that viral investigations by figures such as Shirley helped expose alleged fraud that government oversight failed to stop. Shirley’s Minnesota daycare video was followed by renewed efforts in some states to investigate similar agencies and in other states to restrict publication of information about service providers, a move critics described as an attempt to chill investigations into publicly funded programs.
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