The Cogent Bogan

Five thousand children a day. That is what one Minneapolis restaurant billed the government for feeding in the summer of 2020. The FBI put a camera on the place and counted about FORTY people a day. Wednesday a federal judge gave the owner thirty years. His name is Salim Said. He ran the Safari Restaurant in south Minneapolis, and prosecutors called him the undisputed architect of Feeding Our Future, the $250 million scheme that billed the federal child nutrition program for meals that were never served. Before Covid, Safari did about $600,000 a year in business. In the two years after, it collected more than $16 million in federal child nutrition money. He bought a $1.2 million house with an indoor basketball court and an $87,000 pickup truck. At trial he told the jury, "If you're making good food, people will come to you." Forty did. When Minnesota's Department of Education got suspicious, Feeding Our Future sued the state for discrimination to keep the checks moving. State auditors later found the department had been getting complaints about the nonprofit and often told it to police itself. Tim Walz, the governor through all of it, announced in January he would not run again as the fraud scandal grew. The judge told Said Wednesday, "You took the reputation of our state down with you." Nobody needed a forensic accountant to catch this. Somebody just had to stand outside and count. 💎