Wilson Tindi, a Kenyan national who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman while she was asleep in Minnesota, had avoided deportation for years after completing his prison sentence.
During that time, he got a job and was appointed an audit director at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), where he used to check taxpayer spending and oversee internal accountability.
That was until June 27, 2025, when authorities arrested him for an unrelated offence.
In December 2014, he admitted to entering a woman's apartment without permission and assaulting her while she slept. He would be ordered to leave the country multiple times but was later released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
According to Alpha News, which first reported the story, MDE confirmed that Tindi left that job on June 27, where he earned $145,074 (Sh18.8 million) annually, just as questions were being asked about his conviction for fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2016.
“Wilson Tindi is not a current employee at MDE,” the department said in a statement. “He was a probationary employee in an internal role at MDE for approximately two and a half months. He did not interact with students, visit schools, or have access to private student data.”
Between the time of his arrest and subsequent conviction, Tindi’s LinkedIn account said he was briefly an auditor for a healthcare company and then an “internal audit consultant.”
According to the criminal complaint filed at Hennepin County District Court, Minneapolis police responded to reports of an assault at an apartment building, where a woman claimed that a man had broken into her apartment and attacked her.
She told officers that she had felt someone touch her buttocks and then pull her underwear down. The man fled the apartment, but police processed the crime scene and found a fingerprint in the victim’s bedroom that led them to Tindi.
He was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence, but ordered to spend 210 days in the Hennepin County workhouse, with credit for five days already served.
He was also ordered to pay $1,000 (Sh129400) in restitution to the victim.
Records show that Tindi was first ordered to leave the country after he overstayed a six-month visa granted when he entered the United States in November 2005.
He was taken into custody by ICE in 2009 but released after filing a motion to reopen his immigration proceedings.
In 2014, Tindi was charged with burglary and sexual assault for attempting to sexually assault a woman in her apartment while she slept. He pleaded guilty to the assault, and the burglary charge was dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Following his conviction for assault, a judge ordered that Tindi be deported to Kenya, his country of origin, in 2016. Records show that he then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that he should be released as he posed no threat to the community and ICE could not hold him indefinitely.
A judge ruled in his favour, and he was released in February 2018, having spent 18 months in ICE custody.
Tindi's criminal record also shows that he was arrested for drunk driving in 2022, a charge that was dismissed in favour of a careless driving plea.
