Feeding Our Future Organizer Salim Said Sentenced to 30 Years in Minnesota Child-Meal Fraud Case

Status: Conviction; sentenced. Said was convicted on all 21 counts in 2025. Figures below are from MPR News unless noted.

The sentence

On Oct. 28, Judge Nancy Brasel sentenced Salim Said to 30 years (MPR News; AP). He also gets three years of supervised release. Said is a legal permanent resident and could be deported.

Said, 37, co-owned Safari Restaurant on Lake Street in Minneapolis. He was earlier ordered to forfeit $7.8 million plus vehicles and real estate.

The conviction

In 2025, Said was convicted on all 21 counts, including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock was sentenced in May to nearly 42 years.

What prosecutors said

• The money: Safari-linked defendants took $44 million in total, and Said personally took $13 million.
• Fake claims: prosecutors say Said personally filed 6,000 fake meal claims and paid bribes to Bock.
• A hidden kickback: they said Said used a $310,000 purchase of a non-working Burnsville childcare center from Bock to hide a kickback.

In court

Said apologized. The judge noted his difficult childhood, but said he made "defrauding the public a scalable business model."

The wider case

Said's sentence is the third-longest of the 32 handed down so far among 81 defendants charged since 2022 (MPR News).

The politics (per an X trending story): according to an X trending story, President Trump attacked Gov. Tim Walz over Minnesota program fraud this week, and Walz called the attacks desperate (X trending story).