Fahima Egeh Mahamud, 50, the CEO and owner of Future Leaders Early Learning Center in Minneapolis, has been charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The new federal charges, filed on May 20, allege that Mahamud submitted approximately 13,000 false claims to Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) between October 2022 and December 2025, diverting an estimated $4.6 million from taxpayer funds.

Mahamud is the owner of the Minneapolis daycare that appeared in Nick Shirley’s viral video on alleged daycare fraud. Prosecutors state that the fraudulent scheme involved falsely certifying mandatory family co-payments as collected when they were not actually paid by families. The investigation also reveals Mahamud enrolled her center in the federal child nutrition program through Feeding Our Future while falsely claiming to serve thousands of meals, resulting in an additional alleged diversion of more than $850,000 from that program.

State records indicate that Future Leaders Early Learning Center closed in January following state inspections and mounting fraud scrutiny. Federal authorities have also charged other individuals in related Minnesota benefit-fraud cases, including another daycare owner and two men accused of housing-stabilization fraud.

The total alleged fraud from this single center exceeds $5.4 million across both programs. Just one day after Mahamud’s charges were filed, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen convened in Minneapolis for a major fraud-enforcement announcement.

The Justice Department reported that federal law enforcement partners executed more than 20 search warrants in Minnesota fraud investigations during a single week as part of President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.