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An Eden Prairie woman pleaded guilty Friday to collecting fraudulent payments from federal child nutrition funds.
Hibo Daar, 51, claimed to run a site called Northside Wellness Center that distributed free meals to kids in Minneapolis. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently filing for reimbursement for thousands of meals that she never served.
Daar pleaded guilty to collecting nearly $1.8 million from the nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future for those fraudulent claims. FBI forensic accountants say that Northside spent less than $2,000 of that money on food.
A federal judge ordered Daar to remain in jail as she awaits her sentencing hearing. Prosecutors argued she should remain in custody out of concerns that she might try to flee the country. Daar was arrested at MSP Airport in May as she attempted to fly to Dubai, days after attorneys informed her that she was a target of the fraud investigation.
Daar’s attorney argued that she was not fleeing, but was making a routine visit to her mother, who was sick and hospitalized at the time.
The judge and attorneys for both parties agreed to set a hearing in the coming weeks to review more details of Daar’s planned May trip and make further arguments as to whether or not Daar should remain in jail.
In another hearing in the Feeding Our Future case Friday, St. Paul resident Hamdi Hussein Omar pleaded guilty to fraudulently receiving more than $1 million in federal child nutrition funds. According to the charges, Omar operated a site in Waite Park that claimed to have served 500,000 meals during the pandemic.
Daar and Omar are the latest of dozens of defendants to plead guilty in the investigation into Feeding Our Future, a Twin Cities nonprofit that federal prosecutors say fraudulently claimed around $250 million in emergency pandemic funding intended for feeding kids.
A federal jury in Minneapolis convicted Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock in March.
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