Four Twin Cities residents are charged with evading a total of $1.1 million in Minnesota income taxes after allegedly receiving millions from taxpayer-funded child care and food programs.
According to the criminal complaints, fraud that originated with the nonprofit Feeding Our Future appears to have continued for more than two years after the case became public in early 2022 with a series of FBI raids.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on Monday charged Ali F. Egal and Fardous J. Egal of Mendota Heights and another married couple, Abdirisak A. Abdulle and Samsam Gatah, with filing false tax returns.
The charges follow a lengthy investigation by the Minnesota Department of Revenue, which alleges the couples moved millions of dollars among more than a dozen businesses including catering companies, child care centers and property management firms.
The criminal complaints allege that one of the businesses, MN Best Childcare Center Inc., which was owned by a sister of Ali Egal and Abdirisak Abdulle, had a sponsorship agreement with Feeding Our Future dating to 2019 to serve meals to children.
Prosecutors say that MN Best entered into food vendor contracts with Ruwayda Kitchen, which shared an address on 17th Avenue South in Minneapolis with MN Best and at least 13 other businesses.
According to the complaints, MN Best paid Ruwayda Kitchen $2.4 million for meals from 2020 through 2024 but spent less than $20,000 on food purchases during that time.
In 2024 alone, Ruwayda received $736,646 in payments from MN Best for purportedly serving “23,332 children in regular attendance.”
Investigators say that Fardous Egal used money from Ruwayda Kitchen to pay personal expenses, including a $25,000 roof replacement on her Mendota Heights home.
The Egals, Abdulle, and Gatah are not among the 79 people charged federally in the Feeding Our Future case or in related investigations of Medicaid fraud.
Revenue Department investigator Andrea Kohler writes that her office received a criminal referral in 2024 following a state audit of MN Best and found that the business paid more than $1 million to Ali Egal and Abdirisak Abdulle’s company Egal Properties, but it failed to report any income to the state for that year.
“The investigation uncovered a network of corporate entities held by family members that were used to conceal personal spending and engage in tax avoidance, with significant income generated by public childcare and nutrition programs,” Kohler writes. “From 2019 through 2024, more than $10 million went through the Egal Properties LLC bank accounts.”
According to the complaint, Egal Properties paid $1.7 million in 2019 to purchase a commercial building on Nicollet Avenue. The firm allegedly failed to report its rental income as well as the proceeds from the building’s $2.6 million sale in 2022.
In 2023, a company that Abdulle owned used money from the Nicollet property sale to buy a commercial building on Lake Street that had been subject to forfeiture in the Feeding Our Future case.
Court records do not list attorneys for the defendants. They are scheduled to make their initial court appearances on July 29.
Since September 2022, 61 people have pleaded guilty in the Feeding Our Future case. Another seven were convicted at trial, including Bock, who’s serving a 42-year prison sentence.
