Vol XXI
Volume XXI covers the resumed and substantially completed testimony of FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase. On direct, AUSA Thompson walked Roase through a vast financial architecture: subsidiary entities (Nur Consulting, Wadani Consulting, Nomadic Ventures, MZ Market, and related entities), Afrique Hospitality Group as a money nexus receiving funds from multiple co-conspirators, duplicate Sysco and Upper Lakes Foods invoices submitted simultaneously to both FOF and Partners in Nutrition for different sites, and detailed emails establishing Hayat Nur's role in fabricating invoices for ThinkTechAct Foundation and The Free Minded Institute and transmitting them directly to Kara Lomen at Partners in Nutrition. The most significant moments include: (1) the same food invoices submitted to two different sponsors for different sites (Gov. Ex. C-337 and L-5 side-by-side); (2) Hayat Nur emailing invoices worth over $2 million directly to Kara Lomen at Partners in Nutrition, copying Abdiaziz Farah; (3) Abdimajid Nur emailing himself unsigned, backdated consulting agreements one week after the January 20, 2022 search warrants; and (4) the N-3 flow chart showing $41 million ultimately flowing to defendants from MDE. Cross by Mohring (for Mukhtar Shariff) challenged methodology, established that Afrique had $500,000 in non-food-program investment capital before the program began, confirmed the CLiCS-approved maximums were higher than actual claims, and began a line about the profit margin between food cost and reimbursement rate. Defense counsel should pay close attention to Roase's concession that the Afrique Hospitality account received $500K+ in investor money before food program funds arrived, that the CLiCS-approved meal maximums exceeded what was actually claimed, and that Partners in Nutrition (Kara Lomen's organization) continued to submit claims to MDE even after the January 2022 stop-payment order.
The government continued and substantially completed its direct examination of FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase, its financial summary witness. The strategy was to use Roase to tie together the entire money-flow architecture of the alleged fraud: tracing $47.9 million from MDE through the two sponsors (Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition, a private sponsor organization run by Kara Lomen) to the defendants' entity web, demonstrating that minimal food was purchased relative to reimbursements claimed. The government also used Roase to present the Afrique Hospitality Group pitch deck as consciousness-of-guilt evidence (defendants planned to exploit federal food programs as a 'hedge'), and to establish Hayat Nur's direct role in fabricating invoices and transmitting them to Kara Lomen at Partners in Nutrition. The day concluded with cross-examination by counsel for Mukhtar Shariff, who began challenging the financial methodology and the applicability of COVID-19 waivers.
- Kara Lomen is the single most important uncharged figure in this case. She is the Executive Director of Partners in Nutrition — a PRIVATE SPONSOR ORGANIZATION, not an MDE employee. She personally signed checks from PIN to site entities. She received emails directly from Hayat Nur, communicating on a first-name basis. She controlled which claims PIN submitted to MDE. Partners in Nutrition continued to submit claims to MDE even after the January 2022 search warrants. Lomen has never been charged, never been interviewed by the FBI, and never testified. If your client's involvement runs through PIN (rather than FOF), the failure to pursue Lomen is a significant hole in the government's case — she is the direct counterparty to the submissions and the person who actually controlled the money flow. - The CLiCS-approved meal maximums (4,000 SFSP / 6,000 CACFP daily at Dar Al-Farooq) are higher than any claimed daily meal count. MDE approved these volumes. The government cannot argue the numbers were self-evidently false if the agency approving them accepted those levels. This needs to be developed through an MDE cross or a defense expert on program regulations. - COVID waivers are underutilized by the defense. Roase confirmed waivers existed that allowed open sites, multiple meals distributed at once, parental pickup, and non-congregate service. She is not a regulatory expert and cannot establish what was actually required during the relevant period. Defense counsel should consider a regulatory expert witness who can testify to what USDA waivers actually permitted — this could eliminate the government's 'absence of children eating on site' evidence entirely. - The invoice double-submission evidence (C-337 / L-5) is damaging but has a defense: if the same food was purchased by Afrique and used to supply multiple sites under different sponsors, one could argue the invoices reflect the food source, not the site served. The government did not prove that the same physical food was claimed twice — only that the same invoice document appeared in both submissions. - Abdimajid Nur's post-warrant consulting agreement emails are strong consciousness-of-guilt evidence that no cross touched effectively. For any future defendant with a consulting arrangement, these unsigned backdated documents will be used to argue all consulting agreements were fabricated. If your client has consulting relationships, you need contemporaneous documentation (signed agreements, payment records, tax filings) to distinguish legitimate arrangements from Nur's apparent post-hoc fabrication.
Roase testified through an extensive series of summary charts tracing the flow of approximately $47.9 million in federal child nutrition funds from MDE through sponsors to the defendants' entity network, establishing that across more than 300 accounts she found minimal food purchases relative to funds received. She identified subsidiary entities for each defendant (Nur Consulting, Wadani Consulting, Nomadic Ventures, MZ Market, etc.) and traced each to personal expenditures, foreign transfers, real estate, and vehicles — not food. She also established Hayat Nur's specific role in producing fraudulent invoices and transmitting them to Kara Lomen at Partners in Nutrition.
Mohring (for Mukhtar Shariff) conducted a methodical, effective cross. He established that Mukhtar Shariff does not appear in the Secretary of State filings for ThinkTechAct, Mind Foundry, or MIB Holdings (all Mahad Ibrahim entities), and that Shariff's connection to the scheme is primarily through Afrique Hospitality Group, where he is CEO but where investment capital predated food program involvement. Mohring extracted several helpful concessions: the Afrique account received $500K+ in non-food-program investment capital before any food program money arrived (breaking the government's 'pattern' narrative); CLiCS-approved meal maximums at Dar Al-Farooq were 4,000 (SFSP) and 6,000 (CACFP) — substantially above actual claims; the Dar Al-Farooq site was a FOF site, not a PIN site; Hadith Ahmed admitted to forging names on meal count forms; and the reimbursement rate may have been double the food cost (Roase denied knowing specifics but admitted she calculated per-meal food cost from invoices). Cross was efficient and targeted, though the full challenge to the food-cost methodology remains to be completed.
| Type | Exhibit | Description | Page | Challenge Opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document | Gov. Ex. D-48 | Email from Hayat Nur to Kara Lomen (Partners in Nutrition Executive Director) on January 5, 2022, copying Abdiaziz Farah, subject 'December's Invoices and Total Attendance Reports,' with dozens of attachments including a ThinkTechAct Foundation invoice to Partners in Nutrition for $2,195,796.45. | [p. 5192-5196] | Hayat Nur may have been acting as an administrative assistant forwarding documents prepared by others; the government did not establish she created these invoices, only that she sent them. The 'completed invoices' language in D-56 (same day) is more damaging, but Roase herself acknowledged that Abdiaziz Farah provided the 'register' (D-57) from which the invoices were created — suggesting Nur was executing Farah's instructions. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. D-54 | Email from Hayat Nur to Kara Lomen, copying Abdiaziz Farah, January 11, 2022, subject 'Clifton Invoice for December,' writing: 'Kara, please see attached invoice for Clifton that we missed to include on the previous invoices. Best.' ThinkTechAct Foundation invoice for $102,029.60. | [p. 5197] | The casual 'we' language could reflect Nur acting as a liaison for a legitimate operation, not necessarily guilty knowledge. The invoice submission itself is within PIN's established procedures. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. C-337 and L-5 (side-by-side) | Simultaneous submission of identical Upper Lakes Foods, Asahal Distribution, and Sysco invoices (same order numbers) to two different sponsors: C-337 = email from Mahad Ibrahim to Feeding Our Future on August 4, 2021 for FOF sites; L-5 = email from Abdiaziz Farah to Kara Lomen at Partners in Nutrition on August 2, 2021 for PIN sites. Same food invoices, different sponsors, different sites. | [p. 5129-5134] | The defense can challenge whether the invoices were truly identical (order numbers were slightly transposed — 830274 vs. 830724 per the transcript at page 5132) or whether this reflects transcription errors. Additionally, the invoices may represent food actually purchased by Afrique for delivery to multiple sites; the question is whether the same food was claimed twice. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. F-6 | Email from Abdimajid Nur to his sister Hayat Nur on June 21, 2021, subject 'Weekly Consolidated Meal Counts,' containing the 'easy trick' instruction: 'For all the sites that have the same meal count... after I save the document, I would just then bring up the same document again and just change the site name and make sure to save it as a new document... It will save you so much time.' | [p. 5181] | The defense can argue this describes an administrative efficiency practice for legitimate meal count forms, not instructions for fraud — changing the site name when the meal count is the same is normal data entry. The email does not instruct Hayat to fabricate meal numbers. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. G-294 and G-295 | Multiple emails from Abdimajid Nur to himself on January 27, 2022 (one week after search warrants) containing unsigned, backdated consulting agreements dated April 4, 2021 between Nur Consulting and various entities (Bushra Wholesale, Empire Cuisine, ThinkTechAct). Multiple slightly different versions in the same day's emails. | [p. 5202-5207] | Defense can argue these are drafts of agreements that were never finalized — the lack of signatures is equally consistent with documents never executed as with documents being fabricated post-hoc. That they were saved to a Google Drive already containing templates (G-346) suggests they were work-in-progress documents, not newly created. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. G-110 (Afrique Pitch Deck) | Email from Mahad Ibrahim to Mukhtar Shariff, December 31, 2020, containing Afrique Hospitality Group investor pitch deck: 'Where Minnesota Meets Africa.' Revenue model states 'Hedge risk and volatility of hospitality business with large, consistent revenues from food service contracts (CACFP and SFSP)' and '2500 kids daily worth of food service contracts.' Page 12 contains 'Food service revenue not included in profit and loss projections.' | [p. 5068-5071] | The pitch deck explicitly contemplated a legitimate food service operation with a commercial kitchen. The exclusion of food service from the P&L projections suggests it was treated as a break-even or utility function, not a profit center. The 2018 origin of the concept undermines the COVID-fraud-origin narrative. |
| Financial Record | Gov. Ex. N-3 | Government-created flow-of-money chart showing $47,920,514.40 paid by MDE; $42.4 million ultimately reaching sites/vendors; $41 million to defendants and their entities directly or through related-party sites. | [p. 5210-5213] | N-3 was created by Roase herself, drawing on her own categorization decisions in 300+ bank accounts. The 'related parties' section ($6.3M flowing through before reaching defendants) assumes those entities were controlled by or acting for defendants — a fact question not independently established through this exhibit. The chart does not account for legitimate business expenses, food purchases that were properly applied, or returns to investors. |
| Document | Gov. Ex. D-42 | Email from Hayat Nur to herself on December 21, 2021, subject 'Master Document,' attaching an Afro Produce invoice template with the note: 'You can edit Master document (don't save it as PDF).' | [p. 5186-5187] | Hayat Nur may have received this template from someone else and been forwarding it; the note does not necessarily reflect her creation of the document. No evidence she actually submitted an Afro Produce invoice (as opposed to the TTA and FMI invoices we know she sent to Lomen). |
| Data/Summary | Gov. Ex. M-6 | Sources-and-uses chart for Afrique Hospitality Group Bank of America account (Jan. 7, 2021–June 14, 2022): $6.8M in; $980K food expense (primarily Sysco); $1.2M to Empire entities; $1.1M to defendants' personal accounts. | [p. 5073-5081] | Cross established that $500K+ in the opening was investor capital, not food program money. The $980K Sysco spend is substantial and the defense should have an expert calculate whether $980K in food purchases is consistent with the meal volumes served (especially under COVID waivers allowing bulk pickup). The 'hidden column' categorization methodology was not disclosed to the jury. |
Mohring's cross was the highlight of the day for the defense — methodical, non-argumentative, and productive. He successfully established: (1) the investment-capital predating food program money in Afrique's account, which breaks the government's pattern narrative; (2) CLiCS-approved maximums exceeding actual claims; (3) Mukhtar Shariff's non-appearance in ThinkTechAct, Mind Foundry, and MIB Holdings records; (4) the Dar Al-Farooq/FOF vs. PIN distinction; and (5) the pitch deck's exclusion of food service from profitability projections. The Afrique-as-legitimate-business thread was well developed. However, several opportunities were left: (a) Mohring did not press the 'hidden column' issue hard enough — the jury does not know that Roase's categorization decisions are unreviewable; (b) the COVID waiver framework was only lightly touched; (c) the food-cost-to-reimbursement-rate question was raised but Mohring accepted Roase's 'No way' answer and moved on rather than pinning her down on whether she ever actually calculated whether legitimate food purchases at scale could approach the reimbursement amounts; (d) no challenge was made to the $10 percent food-spend ratio as it applies specifically to Afrique (where Sysco spend was ~$980K out of ~$6.8M = ~14%, not 10%, and the $6.8M includes investor capital). The other defense attorneys largely rode Mohring's cross rather than developing independent challenges — not all cross time was used efficiently.