Eden Prairie woman charged in Feeding Our Future fraud after airport arrest

This story is from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for their free newsletter to receive stories in your inbox.

An Eden Prairie woman has been charged with fraud days after she was arrested for allegedly trying to flee the country after learning she was the target of an FBI investigation.

Federal prosecutors indicted Hibo Daar Wednesday with two counts of wire fraud, making her the 71st defendant in the Feeding Our Future case. Daar is the first defendant in the case to face charges in more than one year. 

Hibo Daar, 50, served as executive director of the Minneapolis-based Northside Wellness Center. Her organization contracted with Feeding Our Future and allegedly received $1.7 million in federal funding through the organization between 2021 and early 2022. 

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Her indictment alleges that she claimed that the federal government owed her another $700,000 on top of that – a total of $2.4 million – for meals she purported to serve to underprivileged children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Karen Mohrlant, an attorney for Daar, declined to comment for this story. 

Daar allegedly reported serving more meals than she actually did – the basis of her wire fraud charges — and submitted rosters of fake children she fed. That information was submitted to Feeding Our Future, which served as a middleman between the federal government and local organizations that received federal funds earmarked to feed underprivileged children. 

The indictment also alleges that Daar’s organization falsely reported how much it spent on food, and that a fake food vendor provided her with phony receipts to cover up the fraud. Daar allegedly only spent $2,000 on food. 

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The alleged fraud involved St. Anthony-based Feeding Our Future receiving federal funds through the Minnesota Department of Education. Feeding Our Future then distributed those funds to food vendors and food sites like Northside Wellness Center, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several organizations reported serving more meals than they actually did, or never served any at all, in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors say defendants in the case stole at least $250 million from the federal government through Feeding Our Future and another organization in Minnesota, making it the largest pandemic fraud in the country.

Daar also allegedly paid $72,000 in kickbacks to former Feeding Our Future employee Hadith Ahmed in exchange for enrolling her organization in the federal child nutrition programs. The money was allegedly paid to a shell company owned by Hadith Ahmed, who pleaded guilty in the case and testified for the government in a 2024 Feeding Our Future trial. 

FBI agents arrested Daar Sunday evening at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Her arrest warrant alleges that she was attempting to flee the country after learning that she was the target of a federal investigation. 

She purchased a round-trip ticket to Dubai last Thursday, May 22, the same day that news outlets, including Sahan Journal, reported that federal agents raided a St. Paul nonprofit in the Feeding Our Future case, according to her arrest warrant. 

Daar is currently being held at Sherburne County jail. A judge ordered earlier this week that she remain in detention after federal prosecutors presented evidence contradicting claims she made in court that she hadn’t traveled internationally in the past two years. Prosecutors said her passport showed that she traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kenya in that time period.

Daar’s indictment and last week’s search of the St. Paul nonprofit, New Vision Foundation, which is not linked to Hibo Daar, appear to indicate a resurgence in the Feeding Our Future case. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office first announced indictments in the case in 2022; there had been little major public news in the case for a year until last week’s raid and Daar’s arrest. 

Authorities have said their investigation is “ongoing,” but have declined to address the recent developments.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on May 29 by Sahan Journal. It was written by Joey Peters, the publication’s politics and government reporter.