MINNEAPOLIS — Mohamed Ismail was one of the owners of Empire Cuisine — the Shakopee restaurant and market at the center of the first Feeding our Future federal meal fraud trial. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 12 years for his role in the case.
After five of the seven defendants were found guilty, Judge Nancy Brasel said that group is responsible for stealing $42 million, of the overall $250 million fraud case.
The evidence showed Empire falsely claimed to serve meals to kids there and at other phony meal sites around the state, providing false documents and laundering money.
Ismail almost didn't make it to trial. Federal agents arrested him on the Jetway at MSP as he attempted to flee to Nairobi, Kenya in April 2022. He was convicted of passport fraud — claiming his passport was "lost at home" after the FBI actually seized it.
Court papers show the feds have been able to claw back at least $4.5 million from Ismail through his bank accounts and his house in Savage which prosecutors say he paid off with fraud money.
But in arguing for a harsh sentence, Assistant U-S Attorney Joe Thompson said Ismail will still one day leave prison "a wealthy man" because of the half-million dollars he wired to China and real estate in Kenya and Somalia that the feds can't access.
In calculating the fraud amount, Judge Nancy Brasel did not count the $5 million Empire Cuisine actually did spend on food, even though prosecutors said much of that was for their restaurant, not the meal program.
But Brasel gave Ismail the harshest sentence the guidelines called for — 12 years — saying, "The taxpayers in Minnesota are rightfully outraged by the brazenness and scope of your crime. The evidence at trial was frankly breathtaking."