MINNEAPOLIS — A man portrayed by prosecutors as one of the pinnacle players in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud investigation received a nearly three-decade federal prison sentence Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sentenced Abdiaziz Farah, 36, to a 28-year prison term during a hearing in a Minneapolis federal courtroom after a jury convicted him last year of 23 counts on a variety of offenses, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery.

“You’ve shown utter and flagrant disregard for the laws of the United States,” Brasel said to Farah after handing down the sentence, calling his actions motivated by “pure, unmitigated greed.”

Through his restaurant Empire Cuisine and affiliated sites, Farah and his co-conspirators claimed to feed 18 million kids at various food sites and submitted $49 million in reimbursements. Farah enrolled the Shakopee-based restaurant in the federal child nutrition program in April 2020, making him one of the earliest participants in the plot.

The only other defendants in the same echelon as Farah, acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson described in court, are the fraud’s ringleaders, Aimee Bock and Salim Said. Jurors found both guilty this spring in the $250 million scheme.

Farah personally pocketed $8 million of the proceeds, which he used to buy a number of luxury items including a Tesla, Porsche and real estate in Kenya. Farah was also previously accused to trying to flee to Kenya and found guilty of attempting to obtain a passport by falsely claiming his was lost. Instead, federal agents had seized the document during search warrants carried out early in the investigation.

Brasel confirmed with prosecutors during Wednesday’s hearing that the money routed to Kenya can never be recovered.

“This really is the nightmare fraud scheme that people are so concerned about,” Thompson said.

Farah in June also pleaded guilty in June to helping orchestrate the attempted bribery of a juror during his own trial last year in an aim for an acquittal. He awaits sentencing in the separate case.

In arguing for a lower sentence than the 30-year recommendation by prosecutors, Farah’s attorney, Andrew Birrell, recounted Farah’s rocky childhood fleeing Somalia and living in a Kenyan refugee camp before living in the United States.

“The reason I told you what he overcame before is that he can overcome this,” Birrell said. “He’s making the right steps.”

Prosecutors, however, said his past underscored the severity of his crimes.

“This country gave him everything,” Thompson said. “And how did he repay this country and this state? By robbing us blind.”

Addressing Farah directly, Brasel called his decision to defraud a state program “ironic,” pointing to the fact many of the opportunities he received after arriving in the United States came from public assistance, including a full tuition scholarship at the University of Minnesota.

“But when the pandemic started, others saw chances to help. You saw a chance to get rich,” she said.

Prior to his sentence, Farah gave an apologetic and, at times, tearful remarks to the court.

“I did this to myself. Worst of all,” Farah said, pausing as he cried. “I did it to my family. I did it to the state that I love. I have no one to blame but myself.”

The sprawling case is now up to 73 defendants following the indictment of Hussein Mohamed Farah this week. Hussein Farah, the director of a St. Paul nonprofit, is charged with inflating the number of meals served to children through a site run by New Vision Foundation and diverting most of the $2.7 million in federal reimbursements to his conspirators. Federal agents raided the St. Paul nonprofit in May in connection with the scheme.

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