Key Feeding Our Future suspect arrested in Somalia
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A key suspect in the Feeding Our Future case who fled the country as investigators were closing in on him has been arrested in his native Somalia.
In a statement, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen said that the FBI worked with the National Intelligence and Security Agency of Somalia to locate and apprehend Abdikerm Eidleh. Rosen said that Eidleh, 42, was arrested in Mogadishu on Thursday.
Rosen did not provide any other details about Eidleh’s arrest or give any indication of when he may be returned to Minnesota.
“The FBI is extremely grateful for the engagement and partnership of the National Intelligence and Security Agency of Somalia in making this apprehension possible,” the FBI Minneapolis field office said in a statement to MPR News.
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Eidleh was among the first four dozen people charged in the Feeding Our Future case in September 2022. The initial batch of indictments came about eight months after the FBI raided Feeding Our Future’s offices and two dozen businesses and residences connected to the sprawling investigation.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who was the lead fraud prosecutor in Minnesota before resigning from the Justice Department in January, said in an interview with MPR News on Friday that Eidleh solicited and collected kickbacks for Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock, who’s serving a 42-year prison sentence.
“He was one of the key players in the Feeding Our Future scheme, and his role in recruiting other people to join the fraud scheme really is part of why the fraud became so sprawling as it did,” Thompson said.
Thompson said that investigators initially located Eidleh in December. Eidleh left the United States in November of 2021, about two months before the FBI raids.
“It’s an extraordinary effort to locate and effectuate the arrest of someone in a foreign country, even more so in a country like Somalia, which does not have an organized federal government, does not have robust federal law enforcement like we do here in the United States,” Thompson said.
At Bock’s 2025 trial, cooperating defendant Hanna Marekegn testified that Eidleh enrolled her Minneapolis restaurant in federal child nutrition programs and demanded that she pay him five percent of the funds she received after submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims. As part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, Marekegn admitted that she paid Eidleh more than $150,000 in kickbacks.
Lul Bashir Ali, who owned a restaurant in Faribault, testified that she paid Eidleh $30,000 per month in kickbacks. Ali’s husband, Mohamed Ali Hussein, told jurors later in the trial that Eidleh called Bock on FaceTime when he came to pick up the payments.
Hussein, who also pleaded guilty, said that during one of these video calls, Bock told Ali “When you’re doing meal counts, write down that you provide 1,000 meals for kids every day. If you do 1,000 meals every day, you’re going to get more money, you’re going to get a big check, big benefit. She was saying American Dream, American Dream.”
Hussein and Ali face sentencing Aug. 24.
Court records do not list an attorney for Eidleh, who faces charges of wire fraud, money laundering and bribery. Eidleh is among 79 people charged in the case. Fifty-nine have pleaded guilty. Seven others, including Bock, were convicted at trials in 2024 and 2025.
Investigators said that the fraud scheme, which also involved the nonprofit Partners in Quality Care, also known as Partners in Nutrition, cost taxpayers around $300 million.
Thompson said Eidleh’s decision to flee the country will work against him in court.
“The presumption of innocence still applies,” Thompson said. “However the jury can consider a defendant’s flight from prosecution as consciousness of guilt.”
