The owner of the Future Leaders Early Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was charged with defrauding Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program on Wednesday. Fahima Egeh Mahamud is accused of filing bogus claims to receive $4.6 million in government grants to serve thousands of meals to low-income children, but the meals allegedly were never served.
Mahamud’s daycare center was one of the places featured in Nick Shirley’s viral video earlier this year, highlighting rampant fraud in Minnesota daycares. According to reports, Mahamud registered Future Leaders Early Learning Center in a federal child nutrition program through the Minnesota nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future. As part of the scheme, she allegedly claimed that her daycare center collected required co-payments from impoverished families to receive the federal government subsidies to provide meals to children, none of which actually happened, according to prosecutors.
“One of the requirements of participation, by both child care providers and recipients, was the collection and payment of co-payments,” read official court documents. “The co-payment was paid to the family’s child care provider biweekly. The co-payment amount was based on family and annual income after allowable deductions. Co-payments were graduated to move families toward full payment of their child care costs as their income increased.”
“Child care providers submitted claims through the Provider Hub, administered by the DHS and DCYF,” noted court documents. “In submitting claims for reimbursement from CCAP, child care providers were required to certify that they had collected co-payments consistent with program requirements, had waived co-payment collection, or were owed a co-payment debt.”
Mahamud is accused of defrauding multiple government programs for over $5 million, including the aforementioned $4.6 million through Minnesota’s CCAP and an additional $850,000 from federal programs designed to aid child nutrition, Minnesota’s Fox 9 reported. This reportedly involved allegedly filing of over 13,000 bogus claims for over three years, between October 2022 and December 2025. The investigation into Future Leaders Early Learning Center revealed that Mahamud allegedly claimed to provide over 60,000 meals per month to children from low-income families, according to Minnesota NBC affiliate KARE.
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It’s not the first incident of legal action taken against Mahamud in 2026. Following the release of Shirley’s viral video, she was indicted for her role in a $250 million fraud scheme involving the Feeding our Future program, a government effort to provide food to low-income families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shirley’s video brought much scrutiny to the fraudulent concerns surrounding Future Leaders Early Learning Center and other daycare centers in Minneapolis. Shortly after being featured in the viral video, Mahamud permanently closed the daycare center, according to multiple reports. She allegedly booked a flight to London in February after closing her business, but law enforcement officers arrested her the same day.
