Saint Paul, Minnesota – The New Vision Foundation, a nonprofit that teaches coding and digital literacy to disadvantaged youth, is based in a nondescript office in an industrial park on Vandalia Street in Saint Paul.
The nonprofit’s website lists grants and donations from corporations and foundations including 3M, Target, the Comcast Foundation, Wells Fargo, Thrivent, and the Greater Twin Cities United Way. The New Vision Foundation also receives funding from Ramsey County, MnDEED, and the City of Saint Paul. A LinkedIn post even includes praise from Mayor Melvin Carter.
However, according to an unsealed search warrant, the New Vision Foundation is the latest target for federal investigators in the $250 million Feeding Our Future meal program fraud investigation.
According to an exhibit from the trial of former Feeding our Future executive director Aimee Bock, FoF paid the New Vision Foundation more than $2.5 million in 2021 after New Vision claimed to serve more than 1 million meals to children.
However, according to the search warrant, the FBI believes the meal count sheets, which claim to feed more than 3,000 children two meals per day, are fraudulent.
Workers at the electronics recycling facility that leases New Vision the office told the feds that they had never seen any children there, “either being served meals or otherwise.”
Another red flag raised in the search warrant was allegedly phony invoices claiming they purchased their food from a supposed food service company in Eden Prairie, which turned out to be an apartment complex.
According to the nonprofit’s public tax filings, the New Vision Foundation reported $3.5 million in “gifts and grants” in 2021, the year it participated in the federal meal program, which was five times more than the previous or following year.
The search warrant affidavit was written by FBI Agent Travis Wilmer, who has been one of the lead agents on the fraud case since its inception and has served as a key witness in two previous trials. In it, Wilmer cites many of the tell-tale signs of fraud discovered in the trials, as well as the New Vision Foundation investigation.
Tax records show money going to corporations run by Hadith Ahmed, who has already pleaded guilty to his role in the fraud, and Ikram Mohamed, who is still awaiting trial.
No one from the New Vision Foundation has been charged yet. This raid is the first new investigation into the Feeding Our Future case to be made public in over a year.
The New Vision Foundation’s board of directors, both past and present, includes prominent members of the Twin Cities business community. KARE 11 News has reached out to each of them for comment, but has yet to hear back.
The executive director of the New Vision Foundation, a 2018 Bush Fellow, did not return multiple requests for comment.