A federal judge in Minneapolis on Wednesday sentenced Salim Said to 30 years in federal prison for his role in the Feeding Our Future fraud — the scheme prosecutors say put $44 million of fraud through his Minneapolis restaurant, Safari, which court records describe as the largest single fake food site in the case. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel also ordered Said to repay more than $44 million in restitution.
Said, 37, co-owned Safari Restaurant in south Minneapolis. A federal jury convicted him in March 2025 on all 21 felony counts against him — wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal-programs bribery and money laundering — alongside Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock. Prosecutors say his operation claimed roughly 3.9 million meals that were never served, at a claimed rate of 6,000 meals a day, while FBI surveillance cameras showed about 40 people a day collecting food; the government says he personally pocketed about $5 million, spent on a $1.2 million home, commercial real estate and an $87,000 pickup truck. "The defendant and his sites did not serve thousands of children; he served a calculated, lucrative lie," prosecutors said. Judge Brasel told him: "You took more than taxpayers' dollars to enrich yourself. You took the reputation of our state down with you."
Prosecutors asked for 40 years and called Said an "undisputed architect" of the scheme; the advisory guideline range began at 30 years, and the judge imposed the bottom of it — there is no parole in the federal system. His defence attorney argued for 12 years, disputed the "architect" label and raised Said's rough upbringing in Somalia. Said had testified in his own defence at trial and denied the allegations — "If you're making good food, people will come to you" — but at sentencing he expressed remorse. He is the 32nd defendant sentenced in the scheme, and coverage notes he is not a U.S. citizen and may face deportation after his sentence.
Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit Bock ran, fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program money, prosecutors say — roughly $250 million in all, the largest pandemic-relief fraud scheme charged in the United States — with claims for about 91 million meals that were never served. Bock herself was sentenced in May to 500 months in prison. The fraud has repeatedly drawn the attention of President Trump, who has ridiculed Governor Tim Walz for failing to stop it; no statement by the president commenting on Said's sentence specifically was found in the day's coverage. The prosecutions run through a Justice Department that in April created a National Fraud Enforcement Division supporting President Trump's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President JD Vance, and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said of Bock's sentence: "Minnesota fraudsters should be on high alert — justice is on the move."
For citizens, this is what accountability for stolen relief money now looks like. The funds were meant to put meals in front of children who needed them; instead, prosecutors say, they bought houses, trucks and commercial property. A 30-year sentence — the bottom of a range that started at three decades — is the courts' answer for benefit fraud on this scale: the money ordered back, the man who took it in prison into his sixties, and a warning aimed at the dozens of defendants still moving through the same pipeline.
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