The desperate search for survivors is into the third day following those strong earthquakes in Venezuela. The death toll continues to rise, with nearly 70,000 people still missing.

From nearly 3,000 miles away, Minnesotans are coming together to help the South American country.

With the flag waving in the wind, friends and strangers came together with a mindset and a mission.

“We’ve had people that have just come to donate and stay to help and organize” said Megan Lima, whose daughter dances at Baila Venezuela, a Richfield dance studio holding a donation drive on Saturday.

“This was, as you know, created very quickly” said Lima. “Every single person in our group has family and friends in Venezuela.”

It’s a country where the United Nations says more than 7.9 million people have already been forcibly displaced in recent years.

“It broke my heart. It’s … I don’t have the words to say. It hurt me. It hurt me” said Monica Verona-Cox, who drove from Delano to Burnsville to drop off donations.

As of Saturday afternoon the death toll is nearly 1,400 with another 3,200 critically injured. Packages that have been compiled at Latinos Depot in Burnsville will be driven by community members to Miami. Once they hit Miami they’ll be taken directly to Caracas.

“Medicines, baby supplements, diapers, wipes” said Magbis Paez, who helped organize the drive happening at Latinos Depot, a Burnsville supermercado.

A few of many products that they say will be needed for those they love.

“We’ve been through so much” Paez added. “Our family here in Minnesota that are Venezuelan too, they’ve become our family. They’re still waiting on calls from family members.”

“These people don’t have anything … they’ve lost everything,” Verona-Cox told WCCO.

“I know that we’re gonna be good. We’re gonna be good after this. So much stronger” Paez added.

If you’d like to help, Baila Venezuela says they need donations for transporting the supplies. You can give them a call or visit them in Richfield.

AP — 

Authorities say a Minnesota man charged with helping to orchestrate a $250 million fraud scheme has been taken into custody in Somalia.

Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, of Burnsville, Minnesota, was taken into custody Thursday in Mogadishu, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said in a news release. Court documents do not show if Eidleh has obtained an attorney, and he has not yet had an opportunity to enter a plea in the case.

Eidleh is one of dozens of people who were indicted in 2022 in connection with what prosecutors said was a massive scheme to defraud a federal meals program.

According to court documents, Eidleh was an employee of Feeding Our Future, an organization that claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children in need during the pandemic under a federal child nutrition program. But prosecutors say just a small portion of the federal money went toward feeding kids, with the rest laundered through shell companies and spent on property, luxury cars and travel.

Eidleh is accused of creating fake child nutrition program sites, falsely claiming they were feeding thousands of children a day and creating shell companies that purported to be meal vendors at the sites. The indictment charges him with 31 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, federal programs bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division said Eidleh was a central figure in “one of the largest fraud schemes in Minnesota history.”

“He not only stole taxpayer dollars, but he also robbed vulnerable children of critical resources they desperately needed. Rather than answer for his crimes in the United States, he fled to Somalia in a futile attempt to evade justice,” McDonald said.

President Donald Trump pointed to the fraud case as part of his justification for launching a massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota late last year.