‘We may have become the mob,’ Feeding Our Future founder said in texts, FBI agent testifies

Aimee Bock compared her nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, to the “mob” in text messages to her business associates and continued to pay fraudulent food distribution operators even when her employees raised questions about their legitimacy, an FBI agent testified Monday.

As the federal trial of Bock and co-defendant Salim Said entered its fifth week, FBI agent Travis Wilmer took the witness stand to testify about the agency’s investigation into the $250 million fraud scheme centered around federally funded programs to feed low-income kids in the summer and after school.

Feeding Our Future oversaw about 300 food distribution sites across Minnesota. Wilmer said Bock’s associates began informing her of their concerns in early 2021, but instead of conducting an internal investigation, Bock took steps to shut up her critics.

In a series of text messages from 2021 that prosecutors showed the jury on Monday, Bock told an underling to have the St. Anthony nonprofit’s attorney contact a food distribution site operator who was disparaging Feeding Our Future.

“He will call her in the morning. She is going to be terrified,” Bock wrote in one text message, Wilmer testified.

After the employee praised the strategy, Bock added: “She is the only problem you guys are having so she needs to be handled. It’s on. We may have become the mob.”

Later that same month, an employee named Hadith Ahmed, who testified in a separate trial last year about the “booming” get-rich-fast scheme, told Bock in an email that he had serious concerns about a meal distribution site operated by Xogmaal Media, noting that the group is a “TV show” that doesn’t work with children or advocate on their behalf.

“These are the things we need to clean up,” Ahmed said to Bock then.

Bock responded a few days later: “Yes, I agree.”

Despite that communication, Bock continued to approve large reimbursement claims to Xogmaal, Wilmer testified, with the jurors seeing three checks totaling almost $500,000 from Bock to the organization in summer 2021.

On cross examination, Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, suggested that Feeding Our Future might have investigated the allegations and terminated Xogmaal or other sites that broke the rules.

“I haven’t seen any evidence that suggested she investigated these concerns,” Wilmer responded. “She certainly didn’t stop the claims from continuing.”

In fact, Wilmer said, Bock kept the money flowing to questionable sites while growing her nonprofit.

Feeding Our Future went from receiving about $3 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. Prosecutors have alleged throughout the case that meal counts were grossly inflated with fake attendance rosters and invoices to rake in millions of dollars from U.S. Department of Agriculture programs. The money was used to buy participants luxury cars and houses, not feed kids, the government contends.

Several former food site operators who have pleaded guilty in the case have also testified about kickbacks and bribes between associates in the pay-to-play scheme.

In text messages from September 2021, Bock told an associate that her goal was to gain national recognition for Feeding Our Future, writing, “We will rule the world, or at least [Minnesota].”

“Do those two statements mean to you that Miss Bock wanted to cheat the world?” Udoibok asked Wilmer.

“I understand that to mean they wanted to continue to grow their influence and power,” Wilmer testified.

In January 2022, just a few days before the FBI raided Bock’s Rosemount home and offices, she got upset when a community activist posted an account on Facebook of a wedding that had just taken place involving a Feeding Our Future employee.

In the Facebook posting, the activist, Abdihakim Nur, showed a video he took of the bride receiving an estimated $100,000 in gold, which Nur said came from meal site operators overseen by Feeding Our Future that were “clearly unqualified ” and “unable to follow the program’s rules.”

On Monday, prosecutors showed the jurors the video and Nur’s Facebook post, where he pleaded with other Somali community members to speak out against the “corruption” at Feeding Our Future.

Wilmer testified that Bock asked Said, her co-defendant on trial, to get that posting “cleaned up” in a text message on Jan. 16, 2022.

“It was removed shortly thereafter,” Wilmer testified.

In another text message to Said in January 2022 about the Facebook post, Bock professed ignorance of any wrongdoing.

“I do not play when it comes to my team or my company,” Bock said in the text message, which was shown to the jury. “You know damn well no one on me [sic] team get [sic] money in shady ways. I’d not tolerate that [expletive] and won’t tolerate false rumors. I’ll shut down the whole program and every site to prove we don’t have anything to hide.”

In another text message, Bock expressed concerns about Said, whose Minneapolis restaurant received more than $12 million through the meals program — more than any other food site overseen by Feeding Our Future, according to the FBI.

In an August text to a Feeding Our Future employee, Bock said that Said hates “white people and has [expletive] to take me down. The entire community is going to hang up on me to take me down.”

On cross examination, Udoibok asked Wilmer: “Is there any communication here where Miss Bock was asking anyone to conceal anything?”

“Not in this communication,” Wilmer responded.

The trial, which started Feb. 3, is the second one in the case that has charged 70 people since 2022. Five people were convicted by a jury last year while two were acquitted; 36 people have pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors expect to wrap up their case by Tuesday or Wednesday, at which point the defense could call their own witnesses. Bock’s attorney said it is not clear yet whether Bock will testify in her own defense.