After more than a year as a fugitive in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case, Said Abdullahi Ereg turned himself in at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this week, having flown in from Kenya with a stop in London, CBS News Minnesota reported. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen confirmed he was in custody.
His placement on the FBI's most wanted fraudster list came shortly before he announced plans to come back to the United States. The charges against him include wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering. Over a roughly one-year stretch from April 2020 through April 2021, prosecutors say he falsely reported serving more than 1.4 million meals to children while funneling at least $4.2 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program money toward his own lifestyle.
More than 70 people were charged in the broader Feeding Our Future scheme. Bock, who prosecutors identified as the scheme's ringleader, received a 500-month prison term and was ordered to pay back close to $243 million to the federal government. At sentencing, the judge described her as having played a central organizing role in the fraud and determined that she had committed perjury during her trial.
The surrender occurred as a 205-page report from the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform drew fresh attention to the broader fraud picture, alleging that Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison had been warned about irregularities as far back as 2019. Investigators put the total meal program losses at roughly $300 million and flagged an additional $9 billion in Medicaid payments as potentially problematic.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson for Walz dismissed the oversight committee as "nothing more than a joke," and Ellison's office denounced the document as "riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations," arguing it was designed to score political points rather than address fraud, CBS News Minnesota reported. Chairman James Comer separately contacted Vice President JD Vance to push for a White House fraud task force examination of Minnesota's social services going back to 2019, and Vance announced on social media that he had passed the matter to the Justice Department.