The Feds Clean Up What Walz Didn’t: The First Name Off the “Most Wanted Fraudsters” List Is from Minnesota. Of course it is.

On June 4, 2026, the FBI launched its first-ever “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list — a financial-crime version of the bureau’s famous Ten Most Wanted, pitched by Vice President JD Vance (R) and unveiled by FBI Director Kash Patel. Six days later, the first fugitive came off it. He is a former Minneapolis grocer named Said Abdullahi Ereg, charged in the “Feeding Our Future” scheme — the $250 million pandemic-meal fraud that federal prosecutors call the single largest COVID-19 fraud in the country.

Ereg, 47, surrendered to FBI agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 10, flown back from Kenya after his face went up on a national fugitive board. According to the federal indictment, he drew more than $4.2 million from a child-nutrition program by claiming to serve over a million meals he never served, then wired the money to foreign accounts and spent it at Burberry and Louis Vuitton. He is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent.

The detail that frames the whole story is the one the state would rather you skip: this fraud ran for years through a program the State of Minnesota was legally responsible for policing. The state’s own Legislative Auditor found the oversight “inadequate” and that it “created opportunities for fraud.” It took the federal government — the FBI, the DOJ, a new most-wanted list — to do the cleanup that Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) and Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN) did not.

• 1st arrest — off the FBI's new Most Wanted Fraudsters list — and the name is from Minnesota · Source: DOJ District of Minnesota, Fox News
• $4.2M — in federal child-nutrition money Ereg allegedly drew by claiming over 1.4 million meals he never served · Source: DOJ indictment, Star Tribune
• $250M — stolen across the Feeding Our Future scheme — 79 charged, ringleader Aimee Bock sentenced to 500 months · Source: DOJ Office of Public Affairs
• “Inadequate” — the Minnesota Legislative Auditor's verdict on state oversight — it 'created opportunities for fraud' · Source: MN Office of the Legislative Auditor

The FBI announced the Most Wanted Fraudsters list on June 4 in Columbus, Ohio. Director Kash Patel credited the idea to Vice President JD Vance (R), chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud: “He said, “Hey, you guys have a top 10 most wanted list for all gangbangers, terrorists, narco-traffickers, murderers and rapists around the world. How about we have a top ten list for most wanted fraudsters?”” Eight fugitives went up on the bureau’s website, each tied to a scheme that stole from programs meant for children, seniors, or working families. One of them was Said Abdullahi Ereg, with a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to his capture.

He did not last long as a fugitive. According to the DOJ’s District of Minnesota, the day after the list went live Ereg signaled through counsel that he wanted to come home; the FBI and Homeland Security facilitated his travel from Kenya, and federal agents were waiting at the gate when his plane touched down at MSP on June 10. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosenput the case in one sentence: “Ereg betrayed the public’s trust and used American taxpayers’ money to enrich himself.” He is the first person on the list to be taken into custody.

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Ereg was indicted on June 24, 2024, on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. According to the indictment, he ran Evergreen Grocery and Deli in Minneapolis and enrolled it as a meal site under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the scheme. Between April 2020 and April 2021 he allegedly claimed to serve more than 3,000 meals twice a day, seven days a week — over 1.4 million meals in all — when, prosecutors say, his store served only a fraction of that. The reimbursements he collected: more than $4.2 million.

Where the money went is the part that reads like a script. Prosecutors allege more than $2.5 million was wired to foreign textile and trading companies, and that proceeds bought luxury goods at Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and Canada Goose for his family. His wife, Najmo Ahmed, has pleaded guilty to money laundering. None of this is a conviction for Ereg himself — the charges are allegations, he is presumed innocent, and the case is pending. But it is a textbook example of the pattern the broader prosecution has documented: a storefront, a sponsor, inflated meal counts, and money out the back door.

“Ereg betrayed the public's trust and used American taxpayers' money to enrich himself.”

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen · District of Minnesota · June 10, 2026

Ereg is one tile in a much larger mosaic. Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit, was a state-approved “sponsor” in the federal child-nutrition program administered by the Minnesota Department of Education. Federal prosecutors say it became the conduit for the single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country: roughly $250 million stolen by enrolling shell companies as meal sites and billing for meals that were never served. The nonprofit’s federal pass-through funding jumped from about $3.4 million in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021.

The numbers since are staggering. The DOJ has charged 79 people in the scheme. Founder and ringleader Aimee Bock was convicted at trial and, in May 2026, sentenced to 500 months — more than 41 years — and ordered to repay nearly $243 million. Federal prosecutors called it the largest pandemic fraud case in the country. Ereg’s arrest matters not because $4.2 million is the biggest number here, but because it is the newest proof that the federal cleanup of Minnesota’s books is still running — two years after the state was warned.

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This is the accountability question, and Minnesota’s own watchdog answered it. In June 2024 the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor — the nonpartisan internal auditor of state government — released a 120-page special review titled “Minnesota Department of Education: Oversight of Feeding Our Future.” Its verdict was blunt: MDE’s oversight was “inadequate” and “created opportunities for fraud.” The department received more than 30 complaints about the organization between June 2018 and December 2021 — including allegations of kickbacks — and the auditor found it did not always verify the nonprofit’s statements before approving program applications.

That report sits under Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), whose administration runs MDE, and Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN), the state’s top law-enforcement officer. A U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report went further, concluding that senior Minnesota officials “repeatedly failed to act” on fraud warnings across multiple social-service programs. Even the presiding federal judge weighed in on one disputed point, publicly clarifying that he never ordered the state to resume payments to Feeding Our Future — the administration, he said, did that voluntarily after MDE had flagged serious deficiencies. The state had the warnings, the complaints, and the legal duty. The federal government brought the cases.

Feeding Our Future is not an isolated failure — it is the headline in a longer file. In December 2025, federal prosecutors in Minnesota announced charges in what the U.S. Attorney described as “industrial-scale” Medicaid fraud, estimating that fraud could exceed $9 billion across Minnesota-run Medicaid services and that half or more of the roughly $18 billion spent on certain Medicaid programs since 2018 could have been fraudulently charged. Two of the most-abused programs were the state’s autism-treatment benefit and its Housing Stabilization Services program.

The Housing Stabilization Services program, launched in 2020, paid out about $21 million in 2021, $42 million in 2022, $74 million in 2023, and $104 million in 2024 — a curve that prosecutors say tracked fraud, not need. In one charged scheme, two Philadelphia men reportedly heard the program was “easy money,” drove to Minnesota to enroll their companies, and billed $3.5 million from back home. On the autism side, one provider allegedly obtained more than $6 million in reimbursements. Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN)has, to his credit, joined federal partners on several of these indictments through his office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit — but the scale of what got through first is the indictment of the oversight itself.

There is a reason the inaugural arrest off a national fraud list traces back to Minneapolis and not anywhere else. When you run the largest pandemic-fraud prosecution in the country, you generate fugitives — defendants who flee before trial. Ereg fled to Kenya after his 2024 indictment and stayed gone for nearly two years. It took putting his face on a national board, with a six-figure reward, to bring him to a gate at MSP. That is the federal apparatus doing the work, and it is worth saying plainly: the FBI and DOJ are the ones closing this file.

The open questions now are the same ones the state has dodged for two years. Whether Ereg’s case ends in a plea or a trial — he is, again, presumed innocent until then. Whether the $9-billion Medicaid estimate holds as charges roll out. And whether anyone in the Walz administration faces accountability for an oversight failure its own auditor called “inadequate.” The first name is off the list. The list, and the questions, are not finished. We will update this page as the case proceeds.

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Last updated June 11, 2026