If you’ve been following the news this week, it might look like we’re losing the fight against the kind of fraud you remember from Nick Shirley’s visit to that government-funded Quality Learing Center. In Minnesota, two remarkable sentences delivered by the same federal judge in the “Feeding the Future” scandal make stealing from the government appear to be a fairly safe business plan for aspiring criminals.
First, convicted thief Abdul Abubakar Ali has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after participating in the theft of millions of dollars in government funds. Second, convicted thief Zamzam Jama has been sentenced to a grand total of six months in prison for participating in the theft of “$4.3 million in fraudulent child nutrition program funds,” though news stories note that Jama was only responsible for “for $491,245 of the stolen funds.” So she’ll do about a month for every $82,000 she stole, not counting time off for good behavior.
