Secret camera shows Safari could not have fed thousands of kids daily, says FBI agent in Feeding Our Future trial

The camera outside Safari Restaurant was rolling 24 hours a day, telling a very different story than the payment forms that made the south Minneapolis restaurant the No. 1 fraud recipient in the massive criminal empire overseen by Feeding Our Future, according to the FBI agent who initiated the surveillance in December 2021.

Though the restaurant claimed to feed nearly 3,500 children a day that month, there were no lines outside the restaurant, no cars fighting for parking spots. Just hours and hours of empty, snow-covered sidewalks, broken up by an occasional visitor or two.

That’s what a jury in federal court saw and heard Wednesday, when FBI agent Jared Kary spent nearly seven hours detailing the government’s four-year investigation of Feeding Our Future and the case against the nonprofit’s top executive, Aimee Bock, and her alleged co-conspirator, Safari co-owner Salim Said.

A federal prosecutor asked Kary if at any point he observed 2,000 children going into Safari Restaurant.

“Absolutely not,” said Kary, noting that the site typically drew an average of 40 people per day while the cameras rolled.

Altogether, the FBI agent told the jury, the restaurant received $12.1 million for allegedly handing out 3.9 million meals in 2020 and 2021 — twice the volume of any other Feeding Our Future site in Minnesota. His conclusion after studying more than a month of video: “It wouldn’t be possible to feed this many children” at Safari.

Kary testified on the fourth day of the federal trial of Bock and Said. Federal prosecutors said Bock took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to create a criminal network of food distribution sites that pretended to feed thousands of low-income children each day, fraudulently collecting $250 million in government reimbursements and at least $1.3 million for Bock.

Bock has denied the allegations, saying she got no improper payments and was unaware of any fraud. Her attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, told the jury this week that he will provide evidence showing Bock was the victim, surrounded by people who took advantage of her desire to help underprivileged people, and that she didn’t receive bribes.

Said controlled three organizations that collectively received more than $30 million, making him and his partners the biggest beneficiaries of the conspiracy, prosecutors said. According to court records, Said allegedly diverted as much as $10 million for his personal use.

Said’s attorneys have acknowledged there is evidence showing crimes occurred, but they maintain their client isn’t one of the culprits. They will cross-examine Kary on Thursday.

The case centers around meal programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to feed low-income children after school and during the summer. Meal distribution sites are overseen by so-called sponsors, like Feeding Our Future, which worked with nearly 300 meal sites across Minnesota.

Said controlled two of the biggest sites: Safari in Minneapolis and ASA Limited in St. Paul, which operated out of a small business on McKnight Road in Maplewood called Gurey/Jubba Deli.

Kary said the government-funded meals program was far more profitable for Said and his partners than the restaurant business.

In 2017 and 2018, tax records show, Safari generated profits of about $300,000 per year on total annual sales of around $600,000. In May 2020, Safari’s first month as a meals provider, the restaurant earned $376,785, Kary testified.

“They were making more money being involved in the child nutrition program than they were in past years,” Kary said.

Instead of spending the money on food, Kary testified, Said and his two partners each received payments from Bock of $200,000 in 2020. In 2021, according to Kary, Said received another $702,000 that he used as a down payment on a $1.1 million home in Plymouth.

Said and his partners collected another $2.7 million to buy a corporate headquarters building for their meal operation in south Minneapolis, records show.

All of that money, Kary said, came from the meals program, which he called “alarming,” considering the fact that the reimbursement program is intended to barely compensate site operators for the meals they provide.

Earlier this week, a top official with the Minnesota Department of Education testified that site operators should not have been able to make a profit on the enterprise because reimbursement rates are so low, such as $3.76 for the lunches provided by Safari.

Kary said the investigation has produced a mountain of evidence, with 1,200 subpoenas leading to 4.4 million pages of records, including transaction records covering 3,000 bank accounts.

Kary said the 27 raids conducted in January 2022, which kickstarted the public phase of the investigation, drew agents from as far as Miami.

“It was the largest resources used for a law enforcement operation in the history of Minnesota,” Kary testified.

Udoibok asked how Bock was supposed to figure out that her site operators were committing fraud without the government’s subpoena power.

“This is a nation of laws — you can’t just take the law into your own hands, can you?” Udoibok asked Kary. “What else should Ms. Bock have done?”

Kary said Bock should have denied reimbursement claims that were patently “outrageous,” noting that she signed forms certifying the accuracy of the documents.

Udoibok noted that the number of meals served at Safari never topped 6,000 per day, the figure approved by the state Education Department. Though the agency was skeptical of that number, Emily Honer — who manages the meals program for the Minnesota Department of Education — testified that she never obtained enough evidence to deny Safari’s application on the basis that it could not possibly serve that many meals.

Honer testified that Safari was claiming to serve more meals per day than the public school districts of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which also participate in the food program.

Of the 70 people charged in the sprawling fraud case since 2022, 34 defendants have pleaded guilty and five defendants tied to a Shakopee restaurant were convicted by a jury last year, while two have been acquitted. The federal government has seized more than $75 million in the case overall.