U.S. prosecutors reached into Somalia to arrest a key suspect in a fraud case originating in Minnesota. Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, was captured on Thursday, the Justice Department announced on Friday. The arrest is the clearest sign yet that the hunt for those behind the scheme has gone international.
U.S. and Somali officials did not disclose how Eidleh was found. However, the Justice Department said the arrest resulted from cooperation between the FBI and Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency.
Prosecutors described Eidleh as the second-in-command, under convicted mastermind Aimee Bock, of the scheme centered on Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that distributed federal money for poor children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, the U.S. indicted 47 people in a roughly $250 million fraud that exploited a federal child nutrition program. It was the largest pandemic-relief fraud prosecuted in the country at that time. Eidleh fled to Somalia when the plan collapsed. Bock was recently sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.
According to prosecutors, Eidleh recruited operators into the scheme and took kickbacks, often disguised as consulting fees and funneled through shell companies. He is accused of setting up his own feeding sites under straw owners, falsely claiming to serve thousands of children daily, while creating fake supply companies to bill the government for food that was never delivered.
“This is a big fish,” U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen told CBS News, calling Eidleh a key figure who recruited businesses and paid bribes to steal public money.
The Trump administration has used the Feeding Our Future case to target Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the U.S., with about 84,000 people of Somali origin in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Most are U.S.-born or naturalized citizens.
Somalia is on Trump’s travel-ban list upon his return to power in 2025, and he has threatened to strip citizenship of naturalized Americans convicted of fraud. Late last year, he called Somalis “trash” in verbal attacks aimed at both Somalia and the Somali-American community.
Federal immigration enforcement agents have flooded the Minneapolis area, and two people have been killed by ICE agents—Renee Good earlier this January and nurse Alex Pretti weeks later—sparking weekslong protests. In January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended Temporary Protected Status for about 1,100 Somalis, ending protections that had been in place since 1991. A federal judge blocked that termination in March, and the legal fight continues.
