Defiant con artists or victims tricked by peers? Attorneys make their final case in Feeding Our Future trial

The leader of Feeding Our Future sold vulnerable immigrants on a “perversion of the American dream,” persuading dozens of Somali business owners to join her $250 million pay-for-play scheme that made them rich before federal investigators caught up to the fraud, prosecutors said in their closing statements Tuesday.

“They just wanted to work hard and provide better lives for themselves and their families,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Jacobs, one of two prosecutors who presented the government’s closing arguments to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, that was the American dream. It should have been enough ... But what Aimee Bock sold them was a perversion of the American dream: lie, cheat, steal, do anything to make more money. And look at them now.”

After five weeks of testimony, the defense rested its case Tuesday morning after both Bock, the founder of the nonprofit at the center of the scheme, and her alleged co-conspirator, Safari Restaurant co-owner Salim Said, testified in their own defense, denying any wrongdoing or kickbacks and saying food was served to kids.

Prosecutors called 30 witnesses who testified that Bock ignored concerns about the ballooning fraud, knew about kickbacks between associates and even requested kickbacks herself. Of the 70 people charged since 2022, 37 have pleaded guilty.

Jacobs told the jury in his closing argument that the pandemic brought out the best in many Minnesotans. But, he said, Bock and Said, who personally earned $5.9 million from the seven meal sites he allegedly controlled, used the crisis to “enrich themselves” by exploiting a federally funded meals program intended to provide food to children in need.

“This program is about making meals, not millionaires,” Jacobs said.

Defense attorneys agreed that massive fraud took place, but they said their clients were not involved in it. Kenneth Udoibok , Bock’s attorney, pointed out in his closing argument that his client rarely looked at the inflated meal count forms that were used to defraud the government or any of the fake invoices used to support those claims. He said she relied on employees and consultants who found it easy to deceive her because she did not speak Somali, like so many of her meal site operators.

“There is no question that people lied to Aimee Bock,” Udoibok told the jury. “You expect your employees to tell you the truth. You don’t expect consultants to be receiving kickbacks.”

Adrian Montez, who represents Said, said other conspirators used Said’s model at Safari Restaurant to rip off the system once they saw how much money a “legitimate” site could earn. He said the real ringleader was Said’s partner at Safari, Abdulkadir Nur Salah, who took over day-to-day management of Safari’s meal site in late 2020. Montez said Salah “corrupted” Said’s idea after Safari started earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per month through the program.

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.

“Abdulkadir Nur Salah always controlled the money at Safari,” Montez said. “So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that when the first big check hit the account ... he wanted to run the show.”

Said took the stand Monday and defiantly claimed he was entitled to make millions in profits off the food program. But Tuesday morning, as prosecutors finished questioning him about documents, he admitted that at least some of the invoices that were used to support the claims of some of his sites appeared to be fabricated.

One of those invoices, for $50,000 worth of milk, was used to support a reimbursement claim at Safari Restaurant when Said was personally vouching for the accuracy of the claims in 2020.

“They look fake to me,” Said testified, noting the invoice claimed he bought 128,000 gallons of milk in one-gallon containers even though the restaurant was serving milk only in small containers at the time.

Prosecutors said the invoices show that Said was the person who first corrupted the program, reminding jurors that Said’s attorneys failed to present a single photo of a family receiving a meal from the restaurant, or to have any of the supposed beneficiaries testify about the food they allegedly received.

“Aimee Bock and Salim Said have been running a long con for years,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Ebert, who offered a rebuttal after Bock and Said’s attorneys presented their closing statements. “Now they are trying to deceive you too. Don’t buy it.”

While prosecutors have portrayed Bock as a ringleader of the scheme — one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the nation — Udoibok has countered that she was a conscientious administrator surrounded by unscrupulous people who took advantage of her desire to help the underprivileged and routinely lied to cover their tracks.

Uboibok noted that she booted dozens of site operators from the program because of suspected fraud and other issues. He said the real problem was that the Minnesota Department of Education — which oversees the meals program — rubber-stamped site approvals and meal claims without investigating instances of suspected fraud.

Udoibok said it isn’t reasonable to expect Bock, working alone, to root out fraud that required the efforts of dozens of federal agents who analyzed more than 4 million pages of records. He reminded jurors that investigators had no trouble locating the records they used to indict her because they collected more than 270 boxes of documents in her nonprofit’s offices.

“Is that the state of mind of someone who wants to deceive — keeping everything that could incriminate you? No,” Udoibok said.

Ebert said the linchpin to Bock’s scheme was Feeding Our Future’s “sham” board of directors, reminding jurors that the three top officers each testified that they did not know Bock had put them on the board and never attended any meetings or signed any documents, even though Bock claims they were actively involved in overseeing the nonprofit.

“If Feeding Our Future had a real board, Aimee Bock never could have gotten away with her egregious fraud and self-dealing,” Ebert said. “Her sham, fraudulent board enabled her to run a nonprofit just the way she wanted it — flush with millions of dollars in fraud money but completely bankrupt ethically.”