Feeding Our Future founder lied to the state to keep fraud rolling, FBI agent testifies in trial

Three months before federal agents burst into her home, Aimee Bock wrote an email that may come back to haunt her.

The founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future didn’t know it at the time, but the FBI was closing in on what it has called one of the largest fraud scams in Minnesota history.

Soon, every email she wrote would be scrutinized for evidence of her role in the scheme. Many of them are being presented this month to a jury in the trial of Bock and co-defendant Salim Said.

The trial was rocked by witness tampering allegations this week, prompting extra security and a ban of any other defendants being on the same floor of the downtown Minneapolis federal courthouse during the trial. The witness tampering issue follows a shocking attempt at juror bribery in a related trial last year.

Back in October 2021, Bock was still fighting for her cause as the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) was questioning the legitimacy of one of her meal distribution sites, which served food to low-income kids after school and during the summer.

Unlike dozens of other food sites she defended, however, this one wasn’t run by a Somali restaurant owner or food supplier. It was operated by her St. Anthony nonprofit, and state regulators couldn’t understand how there were two different meal programs operating in the same small building, reportedly serving nearly 4,000 meals a day to children.

On Oct. 1, 2021, Bock sought to reassure MDE: “We have verified that it is different youth being served at each of the locations in this building,” she wrote in an email.

On Thursday, FBI agent Jared Kary testified that Bock’s response was “not truthful.” In fact, Kary said, video evidence gathered from a secret FBI camera at the location revealed that no one showed up on days in which thousands of children supposedly received meals and attended after-school programs at the graffiti-covered building at 2854 Columbus Av. in Minneapolis.

Moreover, rosters submitted for the two meal programs at the site contained matching names and ages for many children, leading him to believe the lists had been fabricated, said Kary, who also testified in last year’s trial, the first one in the sprawling fraud case that has charged 70 people.

“I don’t believe these children are real,” Kary testified, adding: “These meal counts were ridiculous.”

Kary’s testimony was a key moment in Bock’s trial. So far, most of the evidence against her has been circumstantial, with prosecutors essentially arguing that the fraud perpetuated by many of her meal providers was so obvious that anybody would have spotted it — especially someone like Bock who has years of experience with government-funded meal programs.

Kenneth Udoibok, Bock’s attorney, declined to comment on Kary’s testimony, saying he didn’t want to tip his hand about his cross-examination of the FBI agent, which will begin Monday. But Udoibok said he doesn’t think the government has proven its case against Bock in the first two weeks of testimony.

“Did she know? Has there been any evidence that she knew, she saw, that she directed anyone to misrepresent? No,” Udoibok said. “Wait until Monday and see the response whether that representation [of Kary’s] will stand. If it stands, it stands. Then she’ll be convicted. Otherwise she is going to be acquitted.”

Bock has been accused by prosecutors of organizing a pay-for-play scheme in which dozens of alleged conspirators stole $250 million by pretending to feed thousands of children each day at sites across Minnesota — one of the country’s largest pandemic-related fraud schemes.

The programs at the center of the case are funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which reimburses schools and nonprofits for the meals they serve. MDE administers the program in Minnesota.

Because the fraud case is so large, defendants who pleaded not guilty have separate trials. Of the 70 people charged since 2022, 34 have pleaded guilty and five were convicted by a jury last year while two were acquitted.

Bock is on trial with Said, co-owner of the Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis and other organizations that allegedly defrauded the government of more than $30 million.

Few witnesses have directly tied Bock to criminal activity. On the second day of testimony, Faribault restaurant owner Lul Bashir Ali told the jury she paid $30,000 in kickbacks monthly to a Feeding Our Future employee who would immediately verify each of the payments in a video call with Bock.

Ali said she personally witnessed the calls, but she admitted she never met Bock in person. Moreover, the phone allegedly used to make the calls hasn’t been recovered by investigators, so the communications can’t be confirmed.

Like other site operators who prosecutors have called to testify, Ali and her husband pleaded guilty.

Udoibok sought to blunt the impact of those witnesses by suggesting that many of those site operators were kicked out of the meal program by Bock after she became suspicious of their operations. On Thursday, he indicated Bock may have terminated 50 to 100 sites for rule violations.

One of those sites is Brava Café in Minneapolis, whose owner, Hanna Marekegn, was booted from the program by Bock in 2021 for allegedly inflating reimbursement claims. Marekegn pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in 2022, admitting to paying $150,000 in kickbacks to an unnamed Feeding Our Future employee in exchange for sponsorship. Brava Café received $5.7 million in fraudulent reimbursements, the third-highest among Feeding Our Future’s 300 sites.

On Thursday, FBI agent Travis Wilmer said Bock terminated Marekegn’s site after Marekegn refused to pay Bock an additional $1.5 million in kickbacks in late 2021, evidence that wasn’t previously disclosed. Marekegn, who is on prosecutors' witness list, has not yet testified.

FBI agents have testified that Bock should have known that many of the reimbursement claims she approved were fraudulent by simply looking at the supporting documents, which they said were full of red flags.

Among the warning signs: Attendance rates that usually approached 100%, even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when kids frequently were out sick or in quarantine; perfect matches between the number of meals prepared and later served, indicating zero waste; and attendance forms with built-in formulas that randomly assigned ages to thousands of children.

“This type of consistency does not occur in real settings,” Wilmer testified. “It is too perfect ... Based on her experience, she should have had suspicions.”

Qamar Hassan, another defendant who pleaded guilty, testified Thursday that it was obvious to everyone that her tiny company, S&S Catering, was engaged in fraud. Altogether, S&S received more than $16 million by acting as both a food site operator and a meal provider to other sites in 2020 and 2021, federal records show.

Hassan claimed to serve nearly 5,000 Somali meals daily at her Lake Street kitchen, even though her business was just a block away from Said’s Safari Restaurant, which also claimed to be serving nearly 5,000 Somali meals per day in 2020 and 2021.

S&S also claimed to provide thousands of meals daily to other sites controlled by family members and friends, including Hassan’s daughter, who also pleaded guilty.

In reality, Hassan testified, she was delivering a “couple hundred” meals a day. Hassan, who can’t read or write in English or her native Somali, said she signed whatever papers were put in front of her to justify the reimbursement claims. She said her partner, Sahra Nur — who also pleaded guilty — handled the paperwork.

Before getting involved in the meals program, Hassan testified, her little catering business provided 40 to 50 meals daily to day cares and other clients.

On cross examination, Hassan admitted she never told Bock or other Feeding Our Future employees that she was grossly inflating her meal claims.

“They can see,” testified Hassan, who struggles to communicate in English. “They know we don’t have that many food when they inspect ... They have a brain. I don’t have to tell them.”

Hassan also said she was not pressured into faking her meal counts by Bock or anybody else at Feeding Our Future. She said she was drawn to the program because she heard so many other people were getting rich from it.

“We were just hunting money. It’s not good,” Hassan said, as she broke into tears on the witness stand. “I feel shame every day.”