A foreign national who admitted to defrauding the government of millions of dollars has been sentenced to just over one year in prison. Abdul Abubakar Ali, a Somali engineer living in St. Paul, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in 2022 to participating in the $250 million “Feeding Our Future” fraud scheme. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Ali “knowingly and willfully conspired with others to participate in a fraudulent scheme to obtain and misappropriate millions of dollars in federal child nutrition program funds that were intended as reimbursements for the cost of serving meals to underprivileged children.”

Between December of 2020 and January of 2022, Ali operated a shell company called Youth Inventors Lab, which he enrolled in the Federal Child Nutrition Program (FCNP) under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. Ali and his co-conspirators used Youth Inventors Lab and his tech company, Bilterms Solutions, to submit fraudulent invoices claiming to have fed hundreds and even thousands of meals daily to children from low-income households. The falsified invoices purportedly represented meals purchased from S&S Catering, but S&S Catering never provided meals to Youth Inventors Lab.

Ali reportedly defrauded the government of over $3 million. The Feeding Our Future fraud scheme — just one of many fraud schemes run largely by Minnesota’s sizable Somali immigrant population — stole approximately $250 million in federal welfare funding.

On Monday, Ali was sentenced to one year and one day in prison by Judge Nancy Brasel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, an appointee of President Donald Trump. Brasel denied Ali’s request for probation instead of prison, noting that his crimes were extensive and that he recruited others into the scheme. However, both Brasel and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Murphy noted that Ali was among the first in the fraud ring to plead guilty and had cooperated in the identification and prosecution of other fraudsters.

“This is part of a very large fraud scheme, the largest in the District of Minnesota and one of the largest ever in the country. And you stand responsible for that, and for that reason, I just can’t see, despite your cooperation, a non-custodial sentence here,” Brasel told Ali. “Let me also add, aggravating factors of not just the money, but the fact that the public trust in government programs has been so substantially undermined and continues to be so,” she continued. “We are still having a conversation in this state about the structure of government programs, given the fraud you participated in, and the impact and ripples of that scheme just keep going on and on and on, and you are one reason for it.”

Other fraud schemes involving Somali immigrants in Minnesota have targeted government health care benefits and housing programs, racking up an estimated $20 billion in fraudulently obtained gains. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a plan this week to convince fraudsters to turn on each other and assist the federal government in reclaiming defrauded funds. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Monday issued a proposed new rule to pay informants for actionable tips leading to the recovery of fraudulently obtained funds. Whistleblowers — whether those involved in fraud and money laundering or those in government and financial institutions who have direct knowledge of it — can report tips to FinCEN and, should funds be received, eligible whistleblowers will receive anywhere from 10% to 30% of recovered funds. Bessent confirmed in an interview that the Treasury Department has received over 700 tips, many of which have been turned into “active” investigations.

“As promised, Treasury will reward whistleblowers who provide timely, actionable information on fraud, sanctions violations, and other significant illicit finance activity,” Bessent said in a statement. “President Trump has been clear that Americans have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters. At Treasury, we follow the money, and we strongly encourage individuals to come forward with credible tips to help safeguard our financial system.”

Bessent originally announced his intention to offer cash rewards to whistleblowers in January when visiting Minnesota in the midst of high-profile immigration enforcement operations. “We know that these rats will turn on each other. We heard today that one of the people who has been convicted of fraud, she was given $200,000 to bribe a juror, and she was so corrupt, she skimmed $80,000 of it and only tried to give a $120,000 bribe,” the Treasury chief said at the time. “So we are going to offer whistleblower payments to anyone who wants to tell us who, what, when, where, and how this fraud has been done. And I think that that will give us a great report on how to get it done.”

The Treasury Department has also provided financial institutions with advice on how to identify and prevent fraud and fraudulently-obtained deposits and transfers, particularly pertaining to the defrauding of federal welfare programs. Welfare fraud reports from financial institutions increased by 20% between 2025 and 2024, although the Treasury Department suggested in a press release that the increase in reported fraud represented “only a small fraction of the illicit activity connected to health care fraud in the United States.”