Salim Said told the government his Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis was handing out 6,000 meals a day to hungry children.

According to reports, when FBI agents watched the restaurant, they counted about 40 people picking up food.

He kept filing the claims anyway.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sentenced Said to 30 years in federal prison. He's the 32nd person sentenced in the Feeding Our Future scandal, the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the country. Prosecutors say it drained about $250 million in taxpayer money meant to feed kids during COVID.

Prosecutors called Said a central organizer. They say he and the network around Safari stole about $44 million, and that Said personally pocketed about $13 million. He submitted thousands of fake meal claims himself. He paid bribes to insiders at Feeding Our Future, including its founder, Aimee Bock. One of those bribes was dressed up as a $310,000 purchase of a childcare center in Burnsville that didn't even work.

Need didn't drive any of this. Brasel noted that Said had a good job and was "not in a financial tough spot" when he started stealing. She called defrauding the public "a scalable business model." In other words, the more fake children he claimed to feed, the more money came in.

His defense blamed Bock, who "signed every check," and pointed to Said's hard childhood in Somalia. Brasel said she struggled to connect his past with the greed behind the fraud.

In court, Said apologized. "I'm deeply sorry for the actions and my involvement in this very serious case," he said.

Now he's paying for it. Said has to forfeit $7.8 million, a Mercedes-Benz, a pickup truck, real estate in Minneapolis and Plymouth, and a commercial building in Columbus, Ohio. Prosecutors had asked for 40 years. After he serves his time, Said, who is a legal permanent resident and not a citizen, could be deported.

Thirty years is a rare sentence for a fraud case. Plenty of white-collar defendants walk away with a few years and a fine. Only two people in this scandal have gotten more time: Bock, who got nearly 42 years in May, and one other defendant. Of the 81 people charged since 2022, Said's is one of the toughest sentences yet.

That's a lot of defendants for one program. The money came from the federal government and was handed out by Minnesota's Department of Education under Gov. Tim Walz. Nonprofits like Feeding Our Future were supposed to make sure kids actually got fed. Instead, a restaurant could claim 6,000 meals a day while agents outside counted 40 people, and the checks kept coming for months.

The scandal keeps reaching into Minnesota politics. The Daily Wire reported that Rep. Ilhan Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, incorporated her consulting firm at the same residential address used in business filings by central figures in the scheme. Noor hasn't been charged with anything.

Said's restaurant once claimed to feed 6,000 children a day. Now the federal government is feeding him, for 30 years.