Trial starts for alleged ringleader of massive COVID food fraud
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After years of investigation, charges and guilty pleas, a central figure in the Feeding Our Future case appeared in federal court in Minneapolis as jury selection, which started Monday morning, wrapped up by late afternoon. The panel of 16 people includes four alternates.
Aimee Bock, who founded and was executive director of the defunct Twin Cities nonprofit, is facing trial along with Salim Said, a former owner of a Lake Street restaurant. Last week, two defendants who had been preparing to go on trial with them, Abdulkadir Nur Salah and his brother, Abdi Nur Salah, pleaded guilty.
Bock, 44, and Said, 36, are among 70 people charged since 2022 in what the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office says was the largest COVID-related fraud scheme in the country.
Prosecutors allege that Bock’s organization was at the heart of a $250 million conspiracy to defraud two taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic.
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Government regulators initially allowed restaurants to operate meal sites after child care centers, after-school programs, and other places where kids had received subsidized meals temporarily closed.
Prosecutors say that this and other rule changes combined with lax oversight from the Minnesota Department of Education, which distributes program funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, allowed fraud to spread “like an aggressive cancer.”
In the year before COVID hit, Feeding Our Future distributed around $3.4 million to meal sites that it sponsored. By 2021, the organization’s revenue reached nearly $200 million, or 59 times its pre-pandemic level.
Nearly half of the people charged in the case have pleaded guilty. Besides the Salah brothers, four other defendants entered guilty pleas last week. Those who maintain their innocence are going to trial in small groups. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel has scheduled a half dozen other trials through the end of December.
Brasel imposed new jury security measures Monday after several defendants in the first Feeding Our Future trial allegedly tried to bribe a juror.
She’s allowing defendants to view paper copies of juror questionnaires but must hand over any notes to their attorneys.
Bock allegedly recruited others, primarily from the Somali-American community, to open more than 200 meal sites around Minnesota. The operators soon filed reimbursement requests for improbably large numbers of meals.
Feeding Our Future also opened its own fraudulent sites in Minneapolis and Burnsville and allegedly solicited bribes and kickbacks from others who wanted to participate.
Investigators contend that Safari Restaurant pulled in $16 million between 2020 and 2021, when most of the industry was barely staying afloat, after Said and his co-owners claimed falsely to have served nearly 4 million meals to kids. Safari had annual revenues of around $600,000 prior to COVID.
Safari purported to be a food vendor to others in the conspiracy, and Said also allegedly set up a shell company to operate phony meal sites of his own in St. Paul.
Jurors at the first Feeding Our Future trial saw extensive evidence of the defendants’ lavish spending of proceeds on vehicles, luxury travel, and real estate. But prosecutors’ court filings indicate that they’ll focus less on how Bock and Said allegedly spent money from the scheme.
Prosecutors contend that Said and two others used $2.4 million in stolen money to buy a building that once housed a culinary school in Columbus, Ohio. Bock is accused of funneling $10,000 a week to her boyfriend’s business, and they allegedly spent the funds on jewelry, travel to Las Vegas, and high-end car rentals.
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, counters in a pretrial filing that Bock herself didn’t make any extravagant purchases or go to Las Vegas.
Defense attorneys are likely to emphasize that their clients did provide real food to real kids. Prosecutors have said all along that the defendants distributed some food, but it was primarily a cover for fraudulent claims.
Bock may also try to argue that Feeding Our Future operated with the approval of the Minnesota Department of Education. In another court filing, Udoibok writes that MDE “reviewed and approved Feeding Our Future’s policies and procedures no less than seven times.” Udoibok says the nonprofit even requested guidance from MDE after the department raised concerns about Feeding Our Future’s quick growth.
In June, Minnesota Legislative Auditor Judy Randall issued a scathing report that found MDE approved Feeding Our Future’s applications for meal sites despite fraud concerns, and that a review of the nonprofit in 2018 found major problems, but MDE never followed up.
As in the first trial in 2024, jurors can expect to see reams of emails and canceled checks along with allegedly phony food invoices, attendance rosters, and meal count sheets.
The government’s 102-page list of exhibits includes meal count sheets from Safari Restaurant that Said allegedly used to fraudulently request reimbursement for 6,000 meals that he claimed had been served to children every day throughout January 2021.
Prosecutors also have a lengthy list of potential witnesses. Besides federal agents and forensic accountants, the government may call former employees of Feeding Our Future who were not charged. The list also includes a dozen defendants who pleaded guilty and are cooperating.
