From the Minnesota Star Tribune this morning,
Playing both sides on fraud:
Omar Jamal allegedly promised to protect Feeding Our Future participants, took their money, then turned some of them over to investigators.
Who is Omar Jamal? He’s one of those guys put forward as a spokesperson for the Somali community in Minnesota. On the subject of fraud, the Star Tribune is accusing Jamal of playing both sides against the middle: collecting protection money from fraudsters while simultaneously ratting them out to the feds. Jamal is accused of leveraging his paid community relations position with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office (complete with an official-looking “badge”) to both shake down fraudsters and intimidate state agencies.
The Star Tribune places this alleged shakedown plot in the context of Jamal’s own legal problems, which include a final order of deportation issued in 2011 after convictions for making false statements on immigration documents.
You can, and should, read the Star Tribune piece here. In this post, I will provide context on the who’s who mentioned by name in the article.
The Star Tribune directly accuses Jamal of shaking down four named individuals (out of six) later convicted in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. One person named is Aimee Marie Bock, defendant No. 1 in the case. Bock, the founder and CEO of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, was conviction No. 43, sentenced to almost 42 years in federal prison.
Bock admits (and her account is apparently backed by court records) to the Star Tribune that she paid $14,500 to Jamal for interventions on her behalf, but balked at paying an additional $33,000.
Anab Artan Awad is said to have paid Jamal $100,000 in protection money. Awab is defendant No. 33 in the Feeding case, indicted as part of the Haji’s Kitchen group of defendants. She represents guilty plea No. 5, in the case, having entered a guilty plea back in November 2022. She still has not been sentenced.
In her plea agreement, Anab holds a rare distinction of pleading guilty in two different frauds: the Feeding Our Future one (Case No. 22-cr-226(3), $9.7 million) and a separate, unrelated effort involving translation services billed to Medicaid (21-cr-56(10), $99,000). Anab is facing around 4 years in prison for her roles, give or take a few months.
The Star Tribune notes two groups of defendants who did not pay money to Jamal: Safari Restaurant and S&S Catering.
The paywalled version of the Star Tribune article includes four excerpts apparently taken from FBI reports. The first excerpt mentions a third group who allegedly did pay Jamal,
Gar Gaar Family Services (a/k/a Youth Leadership Academy) has never been charged in the Feeding Case, but their operation was permanently suspended by the state Dept. of Education.
The second excerpt mentions Sahra Nur, defendant No. 25, part of the S&S Catering group of defendants. Nur represents conviction No. 14, and was sentenced to serve more than four years in prison.
The third excerpt mentions Mekfira and Abduljabar Hussein of Shamsia Hopes. Mekfira reportedly did pay Jamal, and both Husseins were each recently sentenced to several years in prison.
The fourth excerpt mentions Hanna Marekegn, defendant No. 47, who apparently paid Jamal $25,000. Markegan represents guilty plea No. 3 in the case and has yet to be sentenced. Based on her October 2022 guilty plea, Marekegn faces between 3 and 4 years in prison. She testified against Bock in open court, during Bock’s 2025 courtroom trial.
As for Omar Jamal, 52, himself, he was arrested on August 29, 2025, on that 2011 deportation order and held in custody for about a month before being released. A habeas corpus petition was filed on his behalf (File No. 25-cv-3719).
As far as can be gleaned from the Star Tribune article, Jamal is still employed by the Ramsey County Sheriff and in no immediate danger of being deported.
Crime in Minnesota pays on so many different levels.