An Islamic charity promoted by National Football League players and prominent Muslim activists as a lifeline for Gaza orphans is now under scrutiny for its founders ties to one of the largest pandemic-era fraud schemes in American history.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Human Development Fund (HDF)a relatively new nonprofit that claims to provide "hot meals" to orphans in Gazawas founded and is led by individuals deeply enmeshed in the orbit of the Feeding Our Future scandal. That scheme, federal prosecutors say, involved more than 80 defendants who conspired to siphon off $250 million from a taxpayer-funded program intended to feed low-income children in Minnesota.
The overlap between HDFs leadership and figures at the center of that fraud raises serious questions about how charitable dollars are being handled, and why major institutions like the NFL are rushing to endorse such groups with minimal due diligence.
HDFs founder and chief executive, Abdirahman Kariye, serves as an imam at Dar Al-Farooq, a predominantly Somali mosque in the Minneapolis suburbs that functioned as a food distribution site for Feeding Our Future.
The charitys director of fundraising events, Khalid Omar, is also a director at Dar Al-Farooq, underscoring the tight institutional and personal links between the mosque, the now-disgraced food program, and the new Gaza-focused nonprofit. For a charity that has rapidly become one of the most visible American Muslim organizations operating in Gaza, those connections are not incidentalthey go to the heart of whether donors can trust that their money is being used as advertised.
The relationship between HDFs leadership and Feeding Our Futures alleged masterminds was not merely casual or distant. In June 2021, at the height of the fraud, Omar and Kariye publicly honored Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock at an award ceremony, praising her "Outstanding leadership to the Minnesota communities."
Omar, who served as emcee, lauded the Feeding Our Future initiative and hailed Bock as a "furious fighter" for the program, according to video obtained by the Center of the American Experiment. Kariye, for his part, amplified Bocks remarks and accused Minnesotas Department of Education of obstructing the food distribution effort that prosecutors later said was riddled with fabricated meal counts and bogus invoices.
The event took on an almost celebratory cult of personality around Bock, who has since been charged as the architect of the fraud. The evening culminated with a group of Somali women dancing around Bock and chanting "Sweet Aimee," a scene that now reads less like a community appreciation event and more like a rally for a scheme that was looting federal funds meant for hungry children. That such a figure was feted by the very people now running a high-profile Gaza charity should give pause to donors and corporate sponsors alike.
Despite its recent founding in 2023, HDF has already amassed a war chest that would be the envy of many long-established nonprofits. Tax filings show the group raised $33 million in its first full year of operation, a staggering sum for an organization with such a short track record and such controversial leadership ties. That financial base is poised to grow even larger thanks to the NFLs "My Cause My Cleats" initiative, through which players select charities to highlight and support. Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, a nominee for the leagues Walter Payton Man of the Year award, is using the platform to raise money for HDF, joined by Baltimore Ravens safety Sanoussi Kane and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Josh Palmer.
HDF has also cultivated backing from outspoken Muslim influencers whose public statements raise additional concerns about the ideological environment surrounding the charity. Among its boosters is Sami Hamdi, a popular commentator who said he felt "euphoria" after Hamass October 7 attack on Israel, a massacre that left more than a thousand Israelis dead and sparked a war in Gaza. Another is left-wing activist Shaun King, who has referred to Hamas as "heroes" and has a long history of controversy over his own fundraising practices. Kariye hosted two fundraisers with Hamdi and King in December 2024, charging $15 per ticket, further intertwining HDFs brand with figures who openly celebrate or excuse terrorism.
The shadow of Feeding Our Future looms especially large over Dar Al-Farooq, the mosque at the center of HDFs leadership network. The mosques role in the scandal became public after the September 2022 indictment of Mukhtar Shariff, a Dar Al-Farooq member who ran the food distribution operation there. Prosecutors say Shariff laundered $40 million through a shell company called Afrique Hospitality, which he used as a vehicle for the scheme. That company, the Free Beacon found, listed the same address as one used by HDF for its Minnesota office, further tightening the web of shared locations, personnel, and operations.
When Shariff went to trial in May 2024, both Kariye and Omar appeared as witnesses, and their testimony drew sharp criticism from prosecutors. According to the government, Kariye "falsely" claimed that he observed food being distributed from Dar Al-Farooq seven days a week, a statement that bolstered the inflated meal counts submitted to the federal program. At one point, Dar Al-Farooq and Shariff asserted they were distributing 3,500 meals per day to children, for a total of 1,943,378 meals in 2021, according to data published by journalist Scott Johnson. In reality, prosecutors say, Shariff and his co-conspirators billed Washington for millions of dollars worth of food that was never prepared, let alone delivered to needy kids.
Shariff was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for stealing $40 million through the scheme, and his testimony painted a picture of long-standing personal ties with HDFs founder. He told the court he had been friends with Kariye for more than a decade and had traveled extensively with him abroad, as reported by the Minnesota Reformer. Shariff also said he was introduced to the Feeding Our Future operation by Mahad Ibrahim, another fraud defendant whom he described as a "respected" elder at Dar Al-Farooq, suggesting that the mosques leadership circle was deeply intertwined with the scam.
Other testimony in the broader Feeding Our Future probe further implicated Dar Al-Farooq in preferential treatment and insider dealing. Hadith Ahmed, a top official at Feeding Our Future who served as Bocks "right hand man," told a separate jury that he received "kickbacks" to give Dar Al-Farooq favorable treatment within the program, according to Sahan Journal. That kind of pay-to-play arrangement, if accurately described, indicates that the mosque and its allies were not just passive participants but active beneficiaries of the frauds inner workings.
The pressure tactics allegedly used by HDFs fundraising chief also surfaced during Shariffs trial. A Bloomington public school official who coordinated with Feeding Our Future testified that Omar, in his capacity as a Dar Al-Farooq and HDF fundraising figure, pushed her to sign off on a statement claiming the mosque distributed 3,000 meals per day. That number later proved to be wildly inflated, and the official, Dinna Ward-Ardley, told the court, "I felt taken advantage of," underscoring how local partners were drawn into endorsing dubious claims.
For now, neither Kariye nor Omar has been charged with any crime, and neither Dar Al-Farooq nor HDF has been formally accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement. All declined to respond to media inquiries about their roles, and the NFL likewise did not answer questions about its promotion of HDF through its high-profile charity campaign. Yet the absence of indictments does not erase the troubling pattern of associations, nor does it absolve major institutions of their responsibility to vet the organizations they elevate and fund.
The Feeding Our Future scandal has already produced significant political fallout in Minnesota, exposing the vulnerabilities of expansive welfare programs and the lax oversight that often accompanies rapid federal spending. The case has been particularly uncomfortable for Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat with deep ties to the states progressive and Somali communities, and for Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat, who has been accused of enabling the scam through his administrations failures.
Walz recently announced he will not seek reelection, a decision that comes as public anger over the fraud and its scale continues to simmer. President Donald Trump, citing the enormity of the Feeding Our Future theft, has surged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Minnesota, signaling a tougher federal posture toward the networks that facilitated the fraud.
Ellisons political vulnerability stems in part from his own documented interactions with Feeding Our Future figures and Dar Al-Farooq leaders. In December 2021, he met with several Somali community leaders and at least two Feeding Our Future officials to discuss the status of the food distribution program and to hear their complaints about the Minnesota Department of Educations scrutiny.
In an audio recording obtained by reporters, Ellison can be heard telling the group he was "here to help" and promising to inquire with the education agency about their concerns, a stance that now appears dangerously accommodating in light of the subsequent indictments.
Just weeks before that meeting, Ellison publicly posted a photograph with Kariye and another Dar Al-Farooq imam, Mohamed Omar, at a poll-watching party for Ellisons son, who was running for state office. Those images and recordings, combined with the explosive details of the Feeding Our Future case, have fueled criticism that Minnesotas Democratic leadership was too cozy with activists and organizations that treated federal anti-hunger funds as a cash machine.
As HDF positions itself as a major conduit for American charitable giving into Gazabacked by NFL stars and influencers who praise Hamas as "heroes" and celebrate "euphoria" after mass terror attacksconservatives are likely to press for far more rigorous oversight, insisting that compassion for the vulnerable must not become a pretext for enriching politically connected insiders.
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