Gandi Mohamed, a 45-year-old member of a family at the center of a sprawling Minnesota fraud case, is expected to plead guilty or enter a no-contest plea at a change-of-plea hearing scheduled for Thursday, making him the sixth relative to face conviction in a scheme that prosecutors say siphoned $14 million from a federal child nutrition program.
The plea comes as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz face intensifying questions about what they knew, when they knew it, and why the state's top law enforcement officer sat in a room with members of the Mohamed family years before the case reached its current stage.
Court records show Mohamed will either admit guilt or accept conviction through a no-contest plea, which would allow sentencing without a formal admission. Either outcome adds another guilty verdict to a case that has become a symbol of institutional failure in Minnesota, and a political liability for the officials who oversaw the state's response.
The political dimension of this case traces back to 2021, when Ellison met with members of Minnesota's Somali community. Members of the Mohamed family were present at that meeting, Fox News Digital reported. At the time, President Joe Biden's Department of Justice had not yet indicted anyone in the fraud scheme, and no convictions had been secured.
A recording from the meeting captured one community member telling Ellison that "the only way that we can protect what we have is by inserting ourselves into the political arena. Putting our votes where it needs to be. But most importantly, putting our dollars in the right place. And supporting candidates that will fight to protect our interests." Ellison's response on the recording: "That's right."
After the meeting, Gandi Mohamed gave Ellison the maximum allowable campaign donation of $2,500. Ellison returned that donation to the Department of Justice, in 2025, years after the meeting and well after the fraud case had become front-page news across the state.
Ellison has denied wrongdoing. In an April 2025 op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune, and in public statements, the attorney general framed the encounter as routine.
Ellison told Fox News Digital:
"I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn't know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them."
The timeline tells a different story than "took nothing from them." He did take a $2,500 donation. He gave it back only after the political heat became unbearable. Whether the meeting itself influenced any official action remains an open question, but the sequence of events is not flattering to Minnesota's chief legal officer.
Fox 9 Minneapolis reported that Gandi Mohamed is the sixth member of his family to plead guilty in the scheme. Prosecutors say the operation fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to children while pocketing $14 million from the federal child nutrition program, money meant to feed kids, not enrich a network of relatives.
The broader fraud scandal in Minnesota has drawn national attention, in part because of its sheer scale and in part because of the political figures now entangled in the fallout.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, told Fox News Digital that while convictions matter, the public deserved more transparency about how the fraud operated.
"It's good that he and his co-conspirators have all been convicted in the case, however, a courtroom trial would have been a useful exercise to show the public the scope and scale of the fraud."
Glahn's point is worth sitting with. A no-contest plea lets a defendant accept conviction and sentencing without admitting guilt on the record. It closes the case. It also closes the door on a public trial that might have revealed exactly how six members of one family managed to drain millions from a program designed to feed hungry children.
Both Walz and Ellison are set to testify before Congress on March 4. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee convened a hearing to examine the alleged misuse of federal funds intended for Minnesota social services and Medicaid programs. An image caption from Fox News placed Walz at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2026, testifying before that committee.
The congressional spotlight arrives at a moment when Walz is already facing serious political pressure back home. The Minnesota House has initiated impeachment proceedings against the governor, a dramatic escalation that reflects the depth of frustration among state lawmakers.
The $9 billion figure referenced in Fox News Digital's headline reflects the broader scope of allegations against Walz and Ellison, though the specific conduct encompassed by that number is not detailed in the reporting. What is clear: prosecutors have documented $14 million stolen from just the child nutrition program, and the congressional committee's mandate covers alleged misuse of federal funds across social services and Medicaid, a far larger pool of taxpayer money.
Concerns about how Minnesota officials have handled public funds extend beyond the Mohamed family case. Gov. Walz has pushed to give the very agency linked to the state's Medicaid fraud crisis even greater control over the program, a move that defies common sense for anyone paying attention to the track record.
Dalia al-Aqidi, a Republican running for Congress in Minneapolis against Rep. Ilhan Omar, has seized on the scandal as a centerpiece of her campaign. She told Fox News Digital that Ellison was "not only looking the other way but doing so after taking donations from these very fraudsters."
"This is a betrayal of every Minnesotan who trusted him with that office."
Al-Aqidi said voters in her district are "furious" and described rolling out a five-point plan to prevent fraud. Her framing cuts to the core of what makes this scandal politically toxic: it's not just about stolen money. It's about who the stolen money was supposed to help.
As al-Aqidi put it:
"This isn't just about taxpayers, it's about people who really need food and housing. Preventing fraud isn't complicated, it just takes the political will to stop this type of abuse. It's clear that this scheme is being used to buy votes, and that has to stop."
The allegation that fraud proceeds were recycled into political donations, and that those donations flowed to the very officials responsible for oversight, is the thread that makes this case more than a garden-variety theft. Sen. Josh Hawley has already confronted Ellison over campaign cash tied to figures in the fraud network, pressing the attorney general on the relationship between donations and enforcement decisions.
Several questions hang over the case as Mohamed's plea hearing approaches. Which court is handling the proceeding? What are the specific charges? What sentence will prosecutors seek? None of these details appear in the current reporting.
The identity of the unnamed Somali community member who spoke on the 2021 recording, the one who told Ellison about "putting our dollars in the right place", also remains undisclosed. Whether that individual had any connection to the fraud scheme is unknown.
And the largest question of all: how did six members of one family manage to steal $14 million from a federal program meant to feed children, in a state whose attorney general sat across a table from them and accepted their money? The federal government has taken notice. President Trump signed a fraud task force executive order that specifically called out Minnesota leaders as complicit in the kind of waste and abuse the order targets.
Ellison says he took a meeting in good faith. Six guilty pleas from one family, a $2,500 donation returned only under pressure, and a congressional subpoena suggest that good faith alone doesn't explain what happened in Minnesota.
When the people charged with protecting taxpayers end up in a room with the people stealing from them, and then cash their checks, accountability isn't optional. It's overdue.
