Feds Raid Saint Paul Nonprofit In Brand New Feeding Our Future Investigation

Feds Raid Saint Paul Nonprofit In Brand New Feeding Our Future Investigation

This is the first new investigation made public in more than a year in the $250 million meal fraud case.

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — A nondescript office within a building in an industrial park on Vandalia Street in Saint Paul is the home of New Vision Foundation, a nonprofit that works with disadvantaged youth by teaching coding and digital literacy.

The nonprofit boasts on its website grants and donations from corporations and foundations such as 3M, Target, Comcast Foundation, Wells Fargo, Thrivent, and Greater Twin Cities United Way. In addition, New Vision Foundation also claims support from Ramsey County, MnDEED, and the City of Saint Paul. A LinkedIn post even shows kudos from Mayor Melvin Carter.

But now, according to an unsealed search warrant, New Vision Foundation is the latest focus for federal investigators in the $250 million Feeding our Future meal program fraud case.

An exhibit from former Feeding our Future executive director Aimee Bock's trial shows that FoF paid New Vision Foundation more than $2.5 million in 2021 after New Vision claimed to serve more than 1 million meals to children.

But according to the search warrant, the FBI believes meal count sheets, claiming to feed more than 3,000 kids two meals every day, are phony.

Workers at the electronics recycling site that leases New Vision the office told the feds they never saw any children there, "Either being served meals or otherwise."

Another red flag pointed out in the search warrant -- allegedly phony invoices claiming they bought their food from a supposed food service company located in Eden Prairie that actually turned out to be an apartment building.

Public tax filings for the nonprofit show that in 2021, the year it participated in the federal meal program, New Vision Foundation reported $3.5 million in "gifts and grants" -- five times as much as the year before or after.

The search warrant affidavit was written by FBI Agent Travis Wilmer, one of the lead agents on the fraud case from the beginning, and a key witness in the two trials that have taken place so far. In it, Wilmer sites many of the tell-tale signs of the fraud proven in the trials as present in the New Vision Foundation investigation.

Tax records show money paid to corporations run by Hadith Ahmed, who has already pleaded guilty to his role in the fraud, and Ikram Mohamed, who is still awaiting trial.

No one from New Vision Foundation has been charged yet. This raid is the first new investigation in the Feeding our Future case made public in more than a year.

The past and present board of directors for New Vision Foundation includes movers and shakers in the Twin Cities business community. KARE 11 News has reached out to each of them for comment but has not heard back.

The executive director of New Vision Foundation, a 2018 Bush Fellow, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

SOURCE: KARE 11