The owner of the Future Leaders Early Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was charged with defrauding Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program on Wednesday. Fahima Egeh Mahamud is accused of filing bogus claims to receive $4.6 million in government grants to serve thousands of meals to low-income children, but the meals allegedly were never served.
Mahamud’s daycare center was one of the places featured in Nick Shirley’s viral video earlier this year, highlighting rampant fraud in Minnesota daycares. According to reports, Mahamud registered Future Leaders Early Learning Center in a federal child nutrition program through the Minnesota nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future. As part of the scheme, she allegedly claimed that her daycare center collected required co-payments from impoverished families to receive the federal government subsidies to provide meals to children, none of which actually happened, according to prosecutors.
“One of the requirements of participation, by both child care providers and recipients, was the collection and payment of co-payments,” read official court documents. “The co-payment was paid to the family’s child care provider biweekly. The co-payment amount was based on family and annual income after allowable deductions. Co-payments were graduated to move families toward full payment of their child care costs as their income increased.”
