Minnesota daycare owner accused of fraud, tried to flee after shutdown

Federal prosecutors unsealed new fraud charges against Minnesota daycare owner Fahima Mahamud, saying she tried to flee the country just two days after shutting down Future Leaders Early Learning. The case has become a sharp reminder of how quickly families can be stranded when a child-care operator collapses under both criminal and financial allegations.

Court documents filed Wednesday say Mahamud notified the state in February that Future Leaders Early Learning was closing, then booked a flight to London the same day. She is now on house arrest and faces conspiracy to defraud the United States and wire fraud charges tied to the Feeding Our Future scheme.

Prosecutors say Future Leaders Early Learning, a site sponsored by Feeding Our Future, pretended to feed children during the pandemic while pocketing public money. The center received more than $850,000 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds from Feeding Our Future between January and July 2021, but only a fraction of that money was spent on food, according to the charges. At one point, prosecutors say, the daycare claimed to serve 60,000 children a month and used falsified invoices to support reimbursement claims.

The allegations did not stop with pandemic food aid. Court documents also say Mahamud submitted tens of thousands of claims to Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program and collected more than $4.5 million in reimbursements between October 2022 and December 2025. That second stream of public money extended the reach of the alleged scheme long after the pandemic emergency funding that first brought Feeding Our Future under scrutiny.

Future Leaders Early Learning had already drawn attention outside the courtroom. The Minneapolis daycare was featured in a viral December video by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, and federal agents raided 20-plus Minnesota daycares and autism centers in April. It remains unclear whether Mahamud’s center was among those searched.

The charges land amid a sprawling fraud crackdown in Minnesota. Nearly 100 people have been charged in the Feeding Our Future case, which prosecutors say involved about $250 million in stolen funds. Federal investigators have said related probes now stretch far beyond child nutrition and daycare reimbursement, with prosecutors previously describing roughly $9 billion in alleged fraud across more than a dozen Medicaid-funded programs in the state.