The charges come months after video featuring empty and closed daycare centers receiving large sums of tax dollars went viral.
A Minneapolis daycare owner was charged on May 20 with conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Fahima Egeh Mahamud, 50, CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, allegedly submitted more than 13,000 false claims to Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) between 2022 and 2025, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday. About 6,144 of these claims required co-payments to be collected from families.
Prosecutors say Mahamud falsely certified that those payments had been collected, allowing her daycare business to receive $4.6 million in improper reimbursements.
Mahamud was initially charged in February with wire fraud for her alleged involvement in the Feeding Our Future meal fraud scheme.
Prosecutors alleged that from December 2020 to July 2021, Mahamud claimed to serve tens of thousands of meals to children at the Future Leaders site each month, when it served only a fraction of those meals, and submitted inflated meal counts, rosters, and invoices for reimbursement.
An attorney for Mahamud could not be reached.
Daycare is one of the services that has been subject to scrutiny amid allegations of widespread welfare fraud in Minnesota.
The Future Leaders Early Learning Center was one of the Minneapolis daycares referenced or featured in YouTuber Nick Shirley’s viral video in December.
HHS’s Child Care Funding Freeze
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Jan. 6 that access to federal child care assistance funds was frozen for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York state.
In a statement, the department cited “concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.”
Those funds will be frozen until the Administration for Children and Families within HHS completes a review and is satisfied that the states are compliant with federal requirements.
