Which specific defendants were charged in Minnesota child care fraud prosecutions and when were those indictments filed?
Executive summary
Prosecutions tied to alleged child-care and related benefit fraud in Minnesota span more than a decade and involve both individual owners and corporate entities; specific named defendants reported in the sources include Ummah Child Care Center (a corporate defendant charged in September 2015), Adarus Abdulle Ali (sentenced in 2013 after earlier prosecutions), Abdifatah Yusuf and Lul Ahmed (charged in June 2024 in a separate HCBS scheme), and Abdirashid Bixi Dool (announced as the 78th defendant in the Feeding Our Future federal indictment) [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting emphasizes that many additional defendants — scores more — have been charged across overlapping state and federal investigations, but the sources do not provide a single, complete roster with indictment dates for every defendant [5] [3].
1. Early local prosecutions and a corporate defendant: Ummah Child Care Center (Sept. 2015 → guilty plea Jan. 3, 2017)
County-level action against a childcare provider appears earliest in the supplied record when Ummah Child Care Center, Inc. was charged in Hennepin County with theft by swindle in September 2015 and later pleaded guilty on January 3, 2017, according to a Minnesota DHS bulletin [1].
2. A 2013 sentencing that signals an earlier pattern: Adarus Abdulle Ali (sentenced May 16, 2013)
Court records and an audit cited by state auditors note that Adarus Abdulle Ali was sentenced on May 16, 2013, to two years in prison, three years supervised release and community service following prosecutions tied to misuse of program funds — a case that the auditor reviewed alongside other Minnesota child-care assistance prosecutions [2].
3. Mid‑2024 HCBS scheme charges: Abdifatah Yusuf and Lul Ahmed (June 2024)
State-level Medicaid-related prosecutions outside the traditional daycare assistance program are represented by the June 2024 charges against Abdifatah Yusuf and his wife, Lul Ahmed, who were accused by the Minnesota Attorney General’s office of defrauding roughly $7.2 million through a sham HCBS (Home and Community‑Based Services) company called Promise Health Services LLC [3].
4. Large federal feeding‑program indictment and later child‑care overlap: Abdirashid Bixi Dool (announced as 78th defendant)
Federal prosecutions tied to Feeding Our Future, a separate but related fraud probe into child‑nutrition funding during the COVID era, have produced dozens of indictments and convictions; the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Abdirashid Bixi Dool became the 78th defendant charged in that scheme, which prosecutors say involved fake meal counts and fraudulent invoices [4] [5]. While Feeding Our Future is not strictly the child‑care assistance program, federal officials and media describe overlapping investigative activity and have noted new allegations focused on child-care centers as the broader probe widened [5] [6].
5. Scale, demographics and the limits of available lists
Multiple outlets and the U.S. Attorney’s Office cited by reporting say the number of defendants across the related Minnesota fraud investigations rose into the dozens and that the majority of indicted individuals in these matters have been Somali American; one source records that 82 of 92 suspects in the broader fraud cases were Somali American, while others report figures like 78 defendants and 57 convictions in the Feeding Our Future cluster — but those counts mix separate schemes and do not translate to a single indictment timeline for all named individuals [3] [5] [4]. The available sources do not publish an exhaustive, consolidated list of every child‑care–specific defendant with the exact indictment filing date; instead, records are scattered across county dockets, state AG filings and federal indictments [2] [1] [4].
6. What the reporting leaves open and why it matters
The current record assembled by these sources provides clear named examples and specific dates for some prosecutions (Ummah — Sept. 2015 charge, Jan. 3, 2017 plea; Ali — May 16, 2013 sentencing; Yusuf and Ahmed — June 2024 charges; Dool — announced as 78th federal defendant), but it does not supply a single master timeline of every child‑care fraud indictment and filing date; anyone seeking a complete roster should consult county court dockets, the Minnesota Attorney General’s filings and the U.S. Attorney’s press releases for each scheme because the coverage conflates multiple, overlapping investigations [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].