Embattled Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)’s hubby’s venture capital management firm has quietly scrubbed information on key officers — including two former Obama administration officials — from public view as questions mount about the congresswoman’s skyrocketing family wealth, The Post has learned.
Omar went from nearly broke to being worth up to $30 million in just a year — as a massive, up to $9 billion fraud scheme involving the Somali community in her district unfolded right under her nose in Minnesota.
Close to 90 people have been charged so far, including at least three with direct ties to the lefty Squad member, though she has not been charged.
It was Somalia-born Omar — who was seen in a resurfaced video last month dishing out food in a restaurant now at the heart of the scandal — who introduced the legislation critics say paved the way for what the feds have called the largest fraud of the pandemic.
The Jimmy Choo wearing socialist introduced the MEALS Act in Congress in 2020, relaxing oversight of government sponsored children’s meals programs during the pandemic, with critics say allowed fraudsters to claim they served millions of meals without verification, while pocketing millions of dollars in government subsidies.
Shortly after the scheme played out, Omar’s husband, political consultant Tim Mynett, launched Rose Lake Capital in 2022, a venture capital management firm.
The company saw its reported value go from nearly zero in 2023, to between $5 million and $25 million in just a year, and somehow claims to having already amassed $60 billion assets under management — an amount many money managers on Wall Street only dream of.
“There’s a lot of strange things going on,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center. “She was basically broke when she came into office and now she’s worth perhaps up to $30 million…she needs to come clean on these assets.”
Rose Lake Capital, which touts its “deep global networks built from on-the-ground work in more than 80 countries,” had less than $1,000 in assets in 2023, according to Omar’s financial disclosure.
Yet despite the reported windfall, the business’s only address is a WeWork in DC, according to its LinkedIn page.
Between September and October — when federal prosecutors announced charges to eight more individuals, including six of Somali descent, for their roles in the welfare scheme — the names and bios of Rose Lake Capitals’s nine officers and advisors were removed from the website. None of them were charged in the fraud.
These names include lobbyist and former Obama Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli; former Senator and Obama Ambassador to China Max Baucus; DNC Finance Chair associate Alex Hoffman; former DNC treasurer William Derrough and former ex-CEO of Amalgamated Bank Keith Mestrich, who once described Amalgamated as “the institutional bank of the Democratic Party.”
Meanwhile Mynett’s other business, a California winery that previously faced fraud allegations and was declared a failed venture in 2023, was suddenly worth between $1 million and $5 million in 2024 — a windfall of 9,900%.
The fraud case involved a wine investor suing Mynett in Oct. 2023, accusing him of swindling him of $900,000 as he “fraudulently misrepresented … that estCru, LLC was a legitimate company.” Mynett claimed he simply struggled to build a business during the pandemic.
The case settled out of court in November.
The winery, eStCru, at some point around 2022 promoted a line of wines with names like “Blockchain” and “The Devil’s Lie,” with a prestigious California winemaker who said she abruptly stopped getting paid in early 2023. The business was only worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in Omar’s financial disclosure that year, making the sudden windfall the next year even more puzzling.
It, too, is listed as operating out of a WeWork, and doesn’t appear to actually sell any wines anymore, according to extensive internet searches.
Despite the high worth placed on the business, its website is a broken link, the phone number is disconnected and the last social media post for the winery dates back to 2023.
When she first took office in 2019, the left-wing “Squad” member declared a net worth between negative $25,000 and negative $65,000, claimed to own no assets and only carrying student and car debt.
Now Omar’s assets have suddenly skyrocketed to anywhere between $6 million to $30 million, according to her latest financial disclosure — just months after the congresswoman dismissed claims she was a millionaire as “ridiculous” and “categorically false.”
Her links to the Minnesota welfare scheme have started to come to light in recent weeks.
Her campaign received $7,400 in direct donations from at least three now-convicted fraudsters, though the Squad member defended she returned the donations after the scandal broke.
She’s been closely linked to at least two individuals from Minnesota’s Somalian community who’ve been charged in the fraud.
One is Salim Ahmed Said, the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.
Said was found guilty in August of stealing more than $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic, blowing much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.
As the scam was underway in 2020, Omar even appeared on video at Minneapolis’ Safari Restaurant to praise the program.
“Every day Safari provides 2,300 meals to children and their families,” she boasted in Somali in the video while being filmed handing trays of food in a parking lot with her pandemic-era facemask pulled down below her nose.
The other individual, Guhaad Hashi Said, worked on Omar’s campaign in 2018 and 2020, and pleaded guilty in August to running a fake food site called Advance Youth Athletic Development, where he falsely claimed to serve 5,000 meals a day and pocketed $3.2 million out of the food program.
On Capitol Hill last week, Omar said she had no regrets about introducing the MEALS Act.
“Absolutely not, it did help feed kids,” she told a reporter.
When reached for comment, Omar’s communications director sent The Post a message saying the entire office was closed until Jan. 5 – without offering an alternative contact.
Mynett did not return The Post’s messages, and both his businesses’ numbers were not functional.
“Does Ilhan Omar know these people? Are they from her wonderfully managed Home Country of Somalia?” President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in September when the news of new charges first broke.
Minnesota governor Tim Waltz – Kamala Harris’ former running mate – has also faced intense scrutiny for letting the scandal unfold under his watch.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote a letter calling for him to resign, and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) hinted at possible criminal charges.
“Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” Trump said last month. “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great state, and billions of dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from.”
The Treasury and Justice Department has already launched an investigation into the alleged money laundering.
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