NFL-backed Human Development Fund shares an address with shell company featured in fraud scandal, among other links
Human Development Fund, an upstart Islamic charity touted by the National Football League and various Muslim influencers, professes to provide “hot meals” to orphans in Gaza. But a Washington Free Beacon investigation found the group’s founders have an array of links to the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which more than 80 people conspired to steal $250 million from a federal program designed to give free meals to poor Minnesota children.
HDF founder and CEO Abdirahman Kariye is an imam at Dar Al-Farooq, a predominantly Somali mosque near Minneapolis that served as a food distribution site for Feeding Our Future. HDF director of fundraising events Khalid Omar is a director of Dar Al-Farooq.
In June 2021, at the height of the fraud, Omar and Kariye celebrated Aimee Bock, the Feeding Our Future founder and mastermind of the fraud scheme, at an award ceremony for her “Outstanding leadership to the Minnesota communities.”
Omar, who emceed the event, touted the Feeding Our Future program and hailed Bock as a “furious fighter” for the initiative, according to video unearthed by Center of the American Experiment. Kariye touted Bock’s remarks at the event and accused Minnesota’s department of education of hindering the food distribution program that was central to the fraud. The celebration ended with a group of Somali women dancing around Bock and serenading her with chants of “Sweet Aimee.”
HDF’s previously unreported links to Feeding Our Future fraudsters raise red flags, particularly as HDF emerges as one of the most prolific U.S. charities operating in Gaza. Founded by Kariye in 2023, HDF raised $33 million in its first full year of operations, according to tax filings. It’s now poised to receive a significant financial boost through the NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” charity program. Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, an NFL Man of the Year nominee, is raising money for HDF, as are Baltimore Ravens safety Sanoussi Kane and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Josh Palmer. HDF also has high-profile backing from the likes of Sami Hamdi, a popular Muslim influencer who said he felt “euphoria” after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, and Shaun King, who has referred to Hamas as “heroes.” Kariye hosted two fundraisers with Hamdi and King in December 2024 at a cost of $15 a ticket.
Dar Al-Farooq’s links to the Feeding Our Future case spilled into public view after the September 2022 indictment of Mukhtar Shariff, a Dar Al-Farooq member who oversaw the food distribution scheme at the mosque. Shariff laundered $40 million through a shell company, Afrique Hospitality, which he used for the scheme. That company had the same address as one that HDF has listed for its Minnesota office, the Free Beacon found.
Kariye and Omar testified as witnesses at Shariff’s trial in May 2024. According to prosecutors, Kariye “falsely” testified that he saw food distributed from Dar Al-Farooq seven days a week. Dar Al-Farooq and Shariff at one point claimed to distribute 3,500 meals a day to children, for a total claim of 1,943,378 meals in 2021, according to data published by journalist Scott Johnson. As part of the scheme, Shariff and his co-conspirators billed the federal government for millions of dollars’ worth of food that was never prepared, much less distributed to poor kids.
Shariff, who was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for stealing $40 million in the scheme, testified that he has been friends with Kariye for more than 10 years and traveled extensively with him abroad, the Minnesota Reformer reported. According to Shariff, he was introduced to the scheme by Mahad Ibrahim, a fellow Feeding Our Future fraudster whom Shariff described as a “respected” elder at Dar Al-Farooq.
Hadith Ahmed, a top official at Feeding Our Future who served as Bock’s “right hand man,” testified in another trial in the sprawling probe that he was paid “kickbacks” to give Dar Al-Farooq preferential treatment by Feeding Our Future, according to Sahan Journal.
At Shariff’s trial, a Bloomington public school official who coordinated with Feeding Our Future testified that Omar, the Dar Al-Farooq and HDF fundraising official, pressured her to approve a statement that claimed Dar Al-Farooq distributed 3,000 meals per day—a figure that proved to be wildly overstated.
“I felt taken advantage of,” Dinna Ward-Ardley, the school official, testified.
Kariye and Omar have not been accused of wrongdoing. Nor has Dar Al-Farooq or HDF. None responded to requests for comment. The NFL also did not respond to a request for comment.
The Feeding Our Future scandal has had significant political reverberations in Minnesota, while at times proving embarrassing for Attorney General Keith Ellison (D.). Gov. Tim Walz (D.), who has been accused of enabling the scam, announced this month he will not seek reelection. President Donald Trump, citing the massive scope of the Feeding Our Future fraud, has surged ICE agents to Minnesota.
Ellison’s vulnerability stems from his connections to Feeding Our Future and several of the scheme’s participants. 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 field their complaints about issues they were having with the Minnesota department of education.
Ellison was heard in an audio recording telling his audience that he was “here to help” them and that he would inquire with the education agency about the issue, the Free Beacon reported.
Weeks earlier, Ellison posted a photo with Kariye, the HDF founder, and his fellow Dar Al-Farooq imam, Mohamed Omar, at a poll-watching party for Ellison’s son, who was running for state office.
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