Sahra Noor, the sister of U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, incorporated a consulting firm called Grit Partners Consulting at an address on Hyacinth Avenue in Lakeville, Minnesota. That same address was used by participants in the Feeding Our Future fraud ring — what investigators have called the "largest public theft in the history of Minnesota."
Grit Partners has "secured more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives" and "consulted on projects backed by" federal agencies including USAID and the CDC.
Grit Partners Consulting — Sahra Noor's firm — was incorporated using an address that overlaps with entities tied to the Feeding Our Future scheme, a sprawling fraud operation that exploited federal child nutrition programs during the pandemic. The ringleader, Aimee Bock, was convicted for her role in orchestrating the theft.
Noor's other venture, People's Center Clinics & Services, a clinic in Minneapolis's Somali neighborhood, received a $2 million earmark. That's a separate pot of taxpayer money flowing to a separate entity run by the same person who just happened to share a mailing address with the biggest fraud defendants in state history.
None of this proves Sahra Noor participated in the Feeding Our Future scheme. But here's what we do know: a woman whose sister sits in the United States Congress incorporated a company that pulls down $20 million in federal health funding at the same physical address used by people who were stealing federal food aid. The address isn't a massive office park. It's not a government complex. It's Hyacinth Avenue in Lakeville, Minnesota.
Defenders will point out that sharing an address isn't a crime. And they're right — it's not. It's just the kind of coincidence that seems to follow certain families in Minnesota politics with remarkable consistency. The same orbit of people, the same river of federal dollars, the same convenient explanations.
The Feeding Our Future case exposed a system where federal money poured into community organizations with minimal oversight, and the people running those organizations treated the funds like a personal ATM. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, gone. The conviction of Aimee Bock was supposed to be the punctuation mark on that scandal.
Turns out it might have been a comma.