Nonprofit leader says Feeding Our Future taught him how to defraud government in exchange for $30K in monthly kickbacks

With federal prosecutors just days from wrapping up their case against Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and one of her alleged accomplices, they finally unveiled a witness Thursday who put Bock in the middle of the criminal conspiracy.

Mohamed Hussein, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to using his Faribault nonprofit to steal more than $3 million meant to pay for meals for underprivileged children, said Bock personally instructed him how to inflate his reimbursement claims and submit bogus expenses to cover his tracks.

Hussein said he and his wife, Faribault restaurant owner Lul Bashir Ali, needed “convincing” because they had no idea how the federally funded meals program worked. Ali testified in the case last week.

“She said if you do 1,000 meals a day, you are going to get more money — you are going to get [a] big check,” Hussein testified, adding that he and his wife never served anywhere near that many meals to children. “I remember her saying you live an ... American dream.”

Instead, Hussein said, he and his wife are now both facing up to five years in prison.

“I feel she ruined my life,” he said, breaking into tears. “She destroyed me and my family.”

Hussein’s testimony provided a critical link in the government’s case against Bock, whom prosecutors accuse of organizing a massive pay-for-play scheme featuring dozens of co-conspirators who got rich by pretending to provide millions of meals to low-income children in 2020 and 2021.

The $250 million scheme is one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country.

The monthlong trial of Bock and Salim Said, co-owner of the defunct Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, is the second to take place since charges were first filed in 2022.

Most of the evidence against Bock remains circumstantial, with prosecutors arguing that she must have known that food distribution sites were submitting fraudulent claims to the state because the backup documents were so obviously phony.

Bock’s attorney, Ken Udoibok, said during a break in the trial Thursday that he thinks Hussein is lying to get a reduced sentence, which will be handed down by the same judge overseeing Bock’s case. Udoibok also noted that the government has not produced a record of the alleged calls involving Hussein, which he said suggests they never took place.

In the three weeks of testimony, some of the witnesses have described how Bock used them for her own purposes, sometimes without their knowledge or permission.

For instance, the three officers of her St. Anthony nonprofit have each testified that they had no idea they were even on the board of Feeding Our Future, despite minutes showing they were present at board meetings in 2020 and 2021.

Jamie Phelps, a mechanic who works for the city of Eagan, said he was astonished to find himself listed as the nonprofit’s treasurer in corporate documents submitted to the state Attorney General’s Office, even though he has no background in finance.

“I would be a fish out of water,” testified Phelps, who said he met Bock at a neighbor’s backyard bonfire but they never became close friends. “I wouldn’t know what I’d be doing.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, the lead prosecutor, said such witnesses have helped make the case that all of the critical documents shown to the jury are “fake,” starting with the nonprofit’s original registration form all the way up to the meal count forms submitted in the weeks before the nonprofit shut down in 2022 after the FBI raided its offices.

One of Bock’s employees, Genesis Alonso, testified that Bock fabricated a 2018 letter from Alonso’s mother as part of a $9,000 bank loan. The letter claimed that Alonso’s mother, Norma Cabadas, was in charge of hiring Bock in 2018 even though Cabadas was then unemployed and “living in poverty” in Texas, Alonso said.

Udoibok acknowledged earlier this week that testimony painting Bock as a serial liar and possible forger hurt his client.

“She doesn’t look good,” Udoibok said after Phelps' testimony.

But Udoibok maintained Wednesday that prosecutors had not yet met their burden of proving Bock’s guilt by putting her in a room with other conspirators and strategizing on how to defraud the government.

“Where’s the proof?” he asked.

Thursday’s testimony by Hussein was prosecutors' answer. Hussein testified that Bock knew he and his wife were submitting inflated meal counts, the critical documents used to determine how much money they would get back from the government.

“She knew this was a lie,” testified Hussein, who had claimed nearly 2,000 children were fed each day by his nonprofit, Somali American Faribault Education.

Hussein said he only met Bock once, in 2021, when she called a group of meal site operators together and told them to stop flaunting their wealth because it could draw the attention of investigators.

Her message, Hussein testified: “Don’t buy cars. Don’t buy houses.”

By then, however, Hussein and his wife had already bought two “very good houses” in Minnesota, as well as several “fancy cars.” Hussein and his wife have agreed to forfeit the property to the government as part of $5.1 million in restitution they owe.

Hussein said Bock’s price for helping him and his wife cheat the government was $30,000 a month, which he said he and his wife paid in cash directly to one of her trusted lieutenants, Abdikerm Eidleh, who was in charge of recruiting new food distribution sites for Feeding Our Future.

Eidleh, who has been charged with federal programs bribery for allegedly shaking down several site operators, fled the United States and remains a fugitive.

Hussein said Bock threatened him if he questioned the kickbacks, saying: “Pay or you’re terminated.”

Though the evidence offered so far indicates Bock profited less than many of the small business owners she put into the meals program, prosecutors say her motivations were less about money than glory.

Bock, Thompson said, is a “narcissist” who reveled in the approval of the local East African community celebrating her string of victories over the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). Jurors have seen evidence that MDE repeatedly tried to put the brakes on Bock’s fast-growing nonprofit in early 2020.

When MDE tried to block the approval of some of her sites, Bock’s attorney accused the department of “systemic racism,” according to records shown to the jury.

In 2021, after the department lifted an order that temporarily froze payments to questionable sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future, nearly 300 Somali community members turned out to celebrate, a moment captured in video shown several times to the jury.

The high point of the evening came when a Somali woman performed a traditional buraanbur to honor Bock, praising her as “Sweet Aimee” and “a woman who cannot be targeted.”

“Aimee Bock was a god,” testified Hanna Marekegn, a Minneapolis cafe owner who attended the celebration and later became one of the first defendants to plead guilty.

Marekegn testified that the East African community looked up to Bock because she had done something that didn’t seem possible, beating a big state agency.

“She give us the real American dream life,” Marekegn testified. “We were able to own houses, good cars. We were living very large.”

Marekegn, who owned Brava Café in Minneapolis, testified that Bock demanded $1.5 million in a kickback and terminated her contract when she refused to cooperate. It was the first time a witness in this month’s Feeding Our Future trial has directly accused Bock of soliciting a bribe.

Prosecutors expect to wrap up their case by Tuesday or Wednesday, at which point the defense will take over.

Udoibok said it is not clear yet whether Bock will testify.