United States prosecutors have reached across the world to seize a leading suspect in a Minnesota fraud case, arresting him in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, was taken into custody on Thursday, with US authorities announcing the arrest on Friday. His capture is the clearest sign yet that the pursuit of those behind the scheme has gone international.

Neither US nor Somali officials have disclosed how Eidleh was located. However, the Department of Justice said his arrest was the result of cooperation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency.

Prosecutors describe Eidleh as the alleged second-in-command to Aimee Bock, the convicted mastermind of a scheme built around Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that channelled federal money meant to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, the US charged 47 people over a roughly $250m fraud that exploited a federal child-nutrition programme, the largest pandemic-relief fraud prosecuted in the country to that point.

Eidleh fled to Somalia as the scheme unravelled. Bock was recently sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, Eidleh recruited operators into the scheme and collected bribes and kickbacks, often disguised as consulting fees and funnelled through shell companies.

He is accused of setting up his own meal sites under the names of stand-in owners, falsely claiming they were serving thousands of children a day, and inventing supplier firms to bill the government for food never delivered.

“This is a big fish,” US Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen told CBS News, calling Eidleh a key figure who recruited businesses and paid bribes to loot public money.

Somali authorities have not commented on the arrest, but a senior Somali official told Al Jazeera that the government was concerned about citizens of other countries and dual nationals returning to Somalia to evade justice.

Crackdown on Somali community

The Trump administration has seized on the Feeding Our Future case to target Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, with about 84,000 people of Somali descent in the Minneapolis-St Paul area.

Most were born in the US or are naturalised citizens.

Somalia was placed among a list of countries on Trump’s travel ban when he returned to power in 2025 and he has also threatened to revoke the citizenship of naturalised Americans convicted of fraud.

Late last year, he also described Somalis as “garbage” in one of his many rhetorical attacks on both Somalia and the Somali American community.

Federal immigration enforcement agents flooded the Minneapolis area, and two people were killed by ICE agents – Renee Good in early January and the nurse Alex Pretti weeks later – igniting weeks of protest.

In January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end Temporary Protected Status, a designation shielding people from deportation to dangerous homelands, for about 1,100 Somalis, ending protections that had stood since 1991.

A federal judge blocked the termination in March, and the legal fight continues. (Al Jazeera)

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