Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future verdict is a start

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Following a five-week trial, a federal jury took a mere five hours to find Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock and her accomplice, Salim Said, guilty on all counts last week.

The swiftness of the verdict is testament to the strong case a team of U.S. and local attorneys, investigators and law enforcers brought against the pair. The thoroughness of the trail and the swiftness with which the brazen fraudsters were convicted merits praise and gratitude from taxpayers. Continued reflection and, yes, outrage, on the magnitude of the theft is also warranted.

In what is believed to be the largest pandemic-related fraud in the nation, prosecutors convinced jurors that Bock and Salim were shameless in their pursuit of ill-gotten gain. Prosecutors charged 70 people in the case in which federal and state funds were earmarked to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic, funds that were instead diverted to the stomachs and pocketbooks of program operators — to the tune of $250 million.

The history of the brazen theft has been well covered. Dozens of co-conspirators submitted inflated attendance sheets and phony invoices to claim to serve thousands of kids who never received a morsel — all the while fraudsters raked in millions used for vacations, luxury cars, houses and a catalog of self-serving items.

So far, of the 42 people who have pleaded guilty or been convicted, three have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to more than 17 years. A dozen more defendants are expected to face trial later this year. More than $75 million has been recovered by investigators.

In the grand scheme of things, it was especially important to convict Bock. A mountain of evidence revealed that she was the mastermind behind the massive fraud scheme. She was executive director and a founder of the St. Anthony-based nonprofit that worked with many of her co-defendants.

Jurors rightly didn’t buy Bock’s arguments that she was unaware of crimes being committed by those she worked with. Nor did they buy that she earned the $1.9 million she personally pocketed from the scheme.

The rampant corruption didn’t stop when the trials begin. In what seemed like a scene from a mob movie, a woman delivered thousands in cash to a juror’s home to buy a not guilty vote. The door-dashed cash was not the only attempt to subvert justice. During Bock and Said’s trial someone brazenly attempted — unsuccessfully — to witness tamper.

Prosecuting fraudsters is essential. But what have our gatekeepers learned? What safeguards, if any, have been put in place to prevent this brand of theft before it can take hold and expand into future large-scale rip offs of government funds?

An Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) report last June found that lax oversight contributed to an atmosphere where fraud could metastasize. After coming under criticism and deep scrutiny for poor oversight, Minnesota Department of Education officials said in a statement that the agency has taken “comprehensive steps to strengthen oversight, implement safeguards and ensure investments reach the children and families who need them most.”

Yet an OLA follow up report this year found that only about a third of its recommendations to tighten oversight had been achieved since last year’s evaluation. That signals a lack of urgency. The Feeding Our Future scandal is the Mount Rushmore of pandemic criminality and shame — but it’s not the only case of government funds being grotesquely misappropriated over the years. Smaller amounts of public dollars intended for social services have also been illegally diverted from the neediest children and adults.

As prosecutor Joseph H. Thompson noted, the Feeding our Future case has become the “shame of Minnesota” by tarnishing Minnesota’s reputation for good governance and civic mindedness as well as its high quality of life and low crime. It also symbolizes “the problem of fraud in our state.”

Thompson said he believes the recent verdict will “help turn the page on this awful chapter in our state’s history.”

Perhaps.

But $250,000,000 of stolen taxpayer money is a bit more than a chapter. It’s more like a searing volume of unfathomable corruption. The embers of such future corruption will only be proactively doused by increased vigilance and a clear-eyed understanding that criminal greed has no boundaries.