Lou Raguse
Saturday October 29, 2022
Mohamed Muse Noor, aka Deeq Darajo is accused of paying his mortgage, buying cryptocurrency and jewelry with money obtained by defrauding the federal meal program
MINNEAPOLIS — Another suspect in the Feeding our Future meal
fraud made his first court appearance Friday afternoon at the Federal
Courthouse in Minneapolis.
Mohamed Muse Noor was arrested last month at the Chicago
O'Hare airport before he could board a flight to Turkey.
Noor is charged with Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud, Wire Fraud,
and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering. The indictment says he claimed to
serve 580,000 meals to children in a five month span.
Noor -- also known as Deeq Darajo -- is a prominent
journalist in Minnesota's Somali community and owner of Xogmaal Media Group.
And now, he is one of 50 people charged in the largest
pandemic fraud in the United States.
The way his case is laid out in court documents makes it
among the easiest to follow how federal investigators believe the scheme
worked.
The documents say Noor registered his media company with the
state in November 2020 and the next month allegedly applied to be a federal
child nutrition program meal site under the sponsorship of Feeding our Future.
According to court documents, Feeding our Future Executive
Director Aimee Bock sent an email in February 2021 asking her staff to get
Xogmaal Media started as a food site.
The next day an unnamed Feeding our Future worker emailed
Bock, writing: "We took a lot of organizations that don't work with
children... Xogmaal is a TV show program. They have no interest with children.
These are the things we need to clean up."
Bock allegedly responded "yes, I agree" -- but
then Feeding our Future wrote the media company checks totaling $494,000.
Court documents show Noor then wrote checks totaling
$387,000 in alleged kickbacks to companies run by Feeding our Future worker
Abdikerm Eidleh
The meal counts submitted by the "after-school"
program allegedly run by Xogmaal media claimed to feed between a thousand to
1500 children per day -- but investigators write Noor used the federal money
instead to pay his mortgage and to buy cryptocurrency and jewelry.
Noor is represented by attorney Jason Steck, whose clients
include three other defendants in the Feeding our Future case.
Although Steck would not comment on Noor's case, he answered
questions concerning the federal investigation after Noor's court hearing.
Steck said not all of the people indicted are guilty.
"With regard to at least some of the cases, I will say
that the government has confused co-conspirators with victims. And some of the
people working at Feeding our Future weren’t just scamming the government and
the Department of Education. They were also scamming their so-called
distributors and vendors beneath them as well. And when the evidence all comes
out, that will become very, very clear," Steck said.
None of the defendants represented by Steck worked for
Feeding our Future but are accused of conspiring with the nonprofit.