Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock deflects blame for oversight of meal program at center of fraud scheme

The leader of Feeding Our Future denied taking kickbacks from meal providers who defrauded the federal government, describing herself Wednesday as a tough watchdog of taxpayer funds who booted dozens of sites from her organization and reported any fraud concerns to state regulators.

Seeking to disprove the notion that Feeding Our Future would approve just about anything, Aimee Bock testified Wednesday that she personally terminated at least 10 vendors and 50 food distribution sites because of suspected fraud or other reasons.

Bock, who is on trial this month and has been charged with organizing one of the largest pandemic-related fraud schemes in the country, told jurors that she looked into some of the operations after staff members raised questions about suspicious invoices and other “red flags.”

“Some of our sites we over-monitored because they were large,” Bock testified. “Is there enough food? Are participants coming to pick up the food? Does everything check out and look OK? There would be times when we’d show up and nothing would be happening.”

Bock, who founded the nonprofit at the center of a massive $250 million fraud scheme, did not say how many of the 50 food distribution sites were specifically terminated for suspected fraud. She acknowledged that many of the meal sites were terminated in April 2021 because they were no longer needed as the pandemic wound down and children returned to school. She said others left to join another sponsoring organization.

This is the fifth week of testimony in the trial of Bock and Salim Said, co-owner of Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, which was one of the largest beneficiaries of the fraud scheme. Prosecutors allege that Bock was the ringleader of the large pay-for-play scheme to steal federal reimbursements meant to fund meals for low-income children after school and during the summer. Instead, they say, defendants used the money to buy luxury homes, cars and other items to enrich themselves.

As a “sponsor,” Feeding Our Future oversaw paperwork and federal reimbursements to nearly 300 food distribution sites.

According to testimony from FBI accountants, Bock received $1.9 million in the scheme, including the money she funneled to former boyfriend Malcolm Watson. Prosecutors also presented evidence indicating Bock lied to state officials to keep the fraud rolling in late 2021.

Though several witnesses have testified that Bock solicited monthly kickbacks in order to approve their inflated invoices, Bock denied any wrongdoing late Wednesday in a series of questions from her attorney, Kenneth Udoibok.

“Did you take any kickbacks from anybody?” Udoibok asked.

“Never,” Bock testified.

“Do you have money overseas?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

“Do have money somewhere?” he asked?

“No. I don’t even have a bank account,” said Bock, who told jurors that she had to give up her Rosemount house and her SUV because she couldn’t afford to make the monthly payments when she lost her job.

Instead of a criminal mastermind, as prosecutors have described her, Bock tried to present a more sympathetic figure Wednesday, telling jurors that her money problems forced her to move back in with her parents. Though jurors have seen photos of loot supposedly purchased with taxpayer money, Bock said that some of the jewelry and clothing was actually given to another woman, describing how Watson sometimes gave her shoes that were two sizes too small, making her later realize he was cheating on her.

Bock said the nearly $1 million she paid Watson was for legitimate renovations to her nonprofit’s headquarters in St. Anthony, telling jurors that she sought bids from other, more experienced construction companies who all rejected the job because there was no working elevator in the building and her offices were on the third floor.

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

During her testimony Wednesday, Bock tried to distance herself from the claims approval process, telling jurors that she did not typically review invoices or daily meal counts because that work was left to underlings.

Bock did not indicate how long it would take for Feeding Our Future to conduct an internal investigation, though she testified that the nonprofit canceled some sites within a month or two of an initial concern.

“If at any point in this process there were red flags, they would be brought to their manager’s attention,” said Bock, noting she had three different managers at her nonprofit. “If managers thought it was something they couldn’t handle, it would be brought to my desk.”

Bock said she became “frustrated” at the lack of support she received from the Minnesota Department of Education, which oversees the meals program and had to sign off when some of the sites Bock terminated moved to another sponsor, where she said they continued to engage in questionable behavior. She did not identify the sponsor.

“It bothered me a lot,” Bock testified. “Some of them were sites we terminated because investigations revealed pretty substantial evidence that they were committing fraud ... A message had been made clear that if I stopped it, it didn’t matter ... There were no consequences ... There was no warning to the other sponsor that there had been issues in the past they should watch out for.”

A handful of witnesses have directly tied Bock to the criminal enterprise, saying she instructed them how to inflate reimbursement claims and threatened them with banishment if they failed to deliver. For instance, Hanna Marekegn, owner of Brava Café in Minneapolis, testified that Bock demanded $1.5 million in cash in 2021 to approve a fraudulent invoice totaling $3.1 million and terminated her contract when she refused to cooperate.

Udoibok asked Bock on Wednesday if she demanded $1.5 million.

“Absolutely not,” Bock said, denying Marekegn’s account that the two met to discuss the invoice and what it would cost to approve.

Bock also denied using a company she formed a month before the FBI raided her home and business in January 2022 as a way to improperly collect money from her site operators. Though the business, School Age Consultants, collected $103,600 in just one month, Bock said she earned that money by selling a policy manual for $2,800 to a broad collection of business people, some of whom operated sites with Feeding Our Future and some who did not.

Bock said she did not “require” anybody to purchase the manual and told site operators that they were “free to develop their own” at a December 2021 meeting she held to tout the thick binder, which she said took months to create.

Bock blames much of the fraud on one of her top former administrators, Abdikerm Eidleh, calling him a “horrible person.” Eidleh, who has been charged with federal programs bribery for allegedly shaking down several site operators, fled the U.S. and remains a fugitive.

Like the first day of Bock’s examination, Udoibok often struggled to get his evidence in front of the jury. The judge blocked Udoibok from introducing at least a dozen documents Wednesday, including Feeding Our Future’s annual payroll, a plan Bock created to deal with the nonprofit’s explosive growth and a list of sites she terminated.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel, who is overseeing the case, rebuked Udoibok for trying to repeatedly circumvent federal rules of evidence that bar hearsay testimony involving a witness who has been deemed untrustworthy.

“My concern is that the continued attempt to admit clearly inadmissible documents is giving an impression to the jury that we are hiding something from them — and we’re not,“ Brasel told Udoibok while jurors were excused from the courtroom for a break.

Udoibok said he was not trying to be “disrespectful” and would follow the court’s direction, but he said he would continue trying to introduce evidence he thinks is vital to his trial strategy.

Bock will continue testifying Thursday morning. Prosecutors have not yet begun their cross-examination.