Safari Restaurant owner gets 30 years in Feeding Our Future fraud, $44 million of pandemic meal claims fed fictitious children

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Judge orders 30-year prison sentence for key figure in Minnesota food fraud – WTOP News wtop.com

A federal judge in Minneapolis has sentenced Salim Said to 30 years in prison for his role in what became America's largest pandemic-era food aid fraud, the Feeding Our Future scandal. Said, who operated Safari Restaurant, a Somali eatery in Minneapolis, was found responsible for roughly $44 million in fraudulent claims for meals that were never served to needy children. Prosecutors said that for 21 consecutive months he submitted thousands of reimbursement claims, day after day, listing children who did not exist. FBI cameras watching his distribution sites recorded around 40 people a day collecting food, while his paperwork claimed a daily distribution of 6,000 meals. "The defendant and his sites did not serve thousands of children; he served a calculated, lucrative lie," prosecutors wrote. The money bought a $1.2 million home, commercial real estate and an $87,000 pickup truck. Judge Nancy Brasel told him at sentencing: "You took more than taxpayers' dollars to enrich yourself. You took the reputation of our state down with you."

The scheme succeeded because the machinery of oversight was built for trust rather than verification. When the COVID-19 pandemic loosened federal school-meal rules and let restaurants serve children outside schools, the Minnesota Department of Education received numerous complaints about Feeding Our Future — and, according to state auditors, often responded by telling the nonprofit to police itself. It did. Aimee Bock, the nonprofit's leader, is now serving a 42-year sentence for recruiting Said and others into the program; a judge ordered her to repay $242 million. Dozens of people have been convicted. Said's defense attorney asked for 12 years and disputed the government's description of his client as the scheme's architect; Said, who testified in 2025 that many meals were delivered off site, expressed remorse at sentencing.

The fraud has since migrated from the courtroom into politics. President Donald Trump repeatedly cited it — while ridiculing Minnesota's governor for failing to stop it — as partial justification for an immigration crackdown in the state's largest cities. Governor Tim Walz announced in January that he will not seek reelection, after months of criticism over the theft. Bock's $242 million repayment order, like the $119 million in crime-victim restitution Trump erased by pardon this month, currently exists only as a line in a judgment.