Restaurant owner Salim Said admitted Monday in federal court that he got rich off a federally funded meals program. But he distanced himself from the actual operation, describing himself mostly as a simple investor who got lucky with food sites that paid off like slot machines.

"I wouldn't have participated if I wasn't making a profit," testified Said, co-owner of Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, the biggest moneymaker of the 299 meal sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future. "I did a couple of days of free food. That is all I can afford. That's my living."

In one of the final days of testimony in the $250 million case involving Said and Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock, jurors were presented with conflicting portraits of Said, who personally earned at least $5.5 million from the seven sites he allegedly controlled.

Prosecutors described Said as a career criminal who has been breaking the law since 2011, when he was convicted of a felony in Indiana. They reminded jurors that bank records showed his restaurant spent hardly any money on food, drawing a sharp protest from Said, who claimed — without evidence — that his restaurant spent at least $2 million with Sysco, a major food supplier.

Said's claim drew an outraged protest from lead prosecutor Joe Thompson, who noted that Safari's bank records do not reflect any large payments to Sysco and that Said's attorneys should present any evidence supporting the claim to the jury.

"Don't lie to this jury," said Thompson, prompting U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel to halt the proceedings for the day.

Said's attorney, Adrian Montez, asked Brasel to strike Thompson's remarks from the record, arguing that the defense has no obligation to prove how much money Safari spent on food. Brasel denied Montez's motion, saying the government is entitled to "test the plausibility" of Said's account.

In a brief interview with the Star Tribune on Monday, Montez said he is not prepared to challenge prosecutors' analysis that shows Safari spent just $317,000 on food in 2020 and 2021, despite obtaining more than $16 million through Feeding Our Future in reimbursements.

"We haven't broken out the numbers like that," Montez said.

In his defense lawyer's presentation, Said came across as a classic immigrant success story.

Said, 36, told jurors how he left Somalia to come to the U.S. with his family, settling in Minneapolis in 2004. Said said he dropped out of high school his junior year after being stabbed by a gang member, which prompted his relocation to Indiana, where he went to work for his uncle as a truck driver.

Over the objections of his attorneys, Brasel allowed prosecutors to present evidence of Said's 2011 felony conviction in Indiana, agreeing with prosecutors that the conviction was pertinent to the current case because it alleged a similar type of fraudulent conduct.

When asked about the conviction in front of the jury, Said claimed innocence, telling jurors he was convicted after his uncle testified in court against him.

"I was set up," Said testified. "That is all something I didn't do."

Said testified that he moved back to Minnesota after his conviction, buying a partial interest in Safari Restaurant in 2015 for $35,000. He said he knew the restaurant well because he had worked at Safari as a teenager, busing tables and washing dishes for less than $5 an hour.

Said admitted the restaurant was far less profitable before the pandemic struck in 2020. In 2017, when the restaurant's total sales reached $624,000, his one-third interest earned him just $30,000.

Said said the restaurant was used to handling big crowds, claiming it sometimes provided meals to thousands of people in a single day between walk-in business at Safari's 15-table dining room, outside catering jobs and on-site weddings, parties and other events.

Said said that kind of work prepared Safari for the demands placed on the restaurant during the pandemic, when it was reimbursed for providing as many as 20,000 meals per day — a claim scoffed at by government witnesses.

"It's not remarkable," Said testified. "When you make good food, people will come."

Said told the court he personally witnessed the restaurant serving as many as 12,000 meals per day in 2020, describing how workers would load up trucks and bring food to Somali families living in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. He said other families would visit Safari's restaurant off East Lake Street. Workers started cooking as early as 3 a.m. and would start loading trays with food by 7:30 a.m., he said.

Said testified that he worked long hours seven days a week from the moment Safari entered the food program in April through the fall of 2020. Eventually his partner, Abdulkadir Nur Salah, took over day-to-day management of the restaurant, freeing Said to work on his investments.

Salah and his brother, Abdi Nur Salah, both pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in January, shortly before the trial began. Abdulkadir Nur Salah's potential prison sentence could be between nine and 11½ years.

Said said he invested $65,000 to $75,000 for each of the new meal sites he started in 2020 and 2021, and the sites immediately began serving thousands of meals per day. Prosecutors showed how those investments paid huge dividends, with Said earning as much as $1.2 million for a single site in less than two years — a return of more than 1,000%.

Though state officials testified that the food program is not supposed to generate profits for site operators, Said testified that he was told he could earn significant profits by a Feeding Our Future employee who first contacted him about the program in 2022.

Said told jurors he invested $40,000 with the employee in 2021 to help him open a soccer-oriented business.

Said also testified that he wrote several large checks to former Feeding Our Future manager Abdikerm Eidleh, who has been charged with soliciting bribes from meal site operators but has fled the country and remains a fugitive. Said testified that he was instructed to sign those checks by Abdulkadir Nur Salah, his partner, who told Said that Eidleh was doing legitimate consulting work for Safari.

"I had no reason not to trust my business partner," Said testified.