documents seized as part of "Feeding Our Future" investigation (FBI)
MINNEAPOLIS (KFGO) – A Plymouth, Minn. woman has pleaded guilty for her role in two separate fraud schemes, one of which was part of the $250 million Feeding Our Future case.
According to court documents, Anab Artan Awad, 52, admitted that from September 2020 through January 2022, she fraudulently claimed over $11 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds, using a non-profit called Multiple Community Services to carry out the scheme.
Of the $11 million, the Minnesota Department of Education paid out over $9.5 million.
According to her guilty plea, Awad ran sites in Osseo, Minneapolis, and Faribault where, at just one of the sites, she claimed to have served more than 1.5 million meals to children, but only a fraction of that number was actually served.
At the Faribault location, no food was served at all and the roster of children who received the meals did not match the names of actual children enrolled in the school district.
In all, Awad and her vendors netted $9,333,858.24 in fraud proceeds for herself and others.
In a separate case, Awad pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud after conspiring with mental health practitioners at Minnesota Multicultural Counseling and Consultant (MMCC) from 2015 to 2016 to bill mental interpretation services that were not provided to Medicaid.
The fraudulent claims caused a nearly $100,000 loss to the Minnesota Medicaid program as part of a broader $4 million scheme by MMCC and its associated interpreters.
That fraud scheme transitioned to the Feeding Our Future scheme.
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