‘We may have become the mob’: Feeding Our Future leader’s texts revealed in trial
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In text messages that Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock wrote to others charged in an alleged $250 million conspiracy to defraud taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs, she discussed scorched-earth tactics for dealing with critics of her nonprofit.
In one message to Feeding Our Future employee Hadith Ahmed from February 2021 that Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Bobier showed to jurors on Monday, Bock discussed how to respond to a complaint from meal distribution site operator Anab Awad about a lack of payment.
Awad would later admit in 2022 that she managed multiple fraudulent meal distribution sites in Minnesota. Ahmed also pleaded guilty in the wider case and testified at the first Feeding Our Future trial last year that he was Bock’s “right hand man.”
Referring to her then-attorney, Rhyddid Watkins, Bock wrote, “He wants to send her [Awad] a subpoena. He’s going to call her in the morning. She’s going to be terrified.” Added Bock in three subsequent texts to Ahmed, “She is the only problem you guys are having so she needs to be handled. It’s on. We may have become the mob.”
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The trial of Bock and Salim Said, the former co-owner of Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, entered its fourth week on Monday with additional testimony from FBI Special Agent Travis Wilmer, who provided jurors with context for messages recovered during a search of Bock’s phone.
That same month, Ahmed emailed Bock with concerns about Xogmaal Media Group, a company in Minneapolis that allegedly received $1.4 million in fraudulent meal payments.
“We took a lot of organization (sic) that don’t work with children or are advocate, (sic) I am just realizing that now,” Ahmed wrote. “For example Xogmaal is a TV show program. They have no interest with children. These are the things we need to clean up.”
“Yes I agree,” Bock replied several days later.
But Wilmer testified that he and the other investigators found no evidence that Bock looked into the concerns that Ahmed raised. Bobier then showed jurors a check, signed by Bock four months later, for $93,124 as well as a subsequent check Bock signed for Xogmaal for $330,770.
In a separate string of text messages to Feeding Our Future consultant Ikram Mohamed, who’s also charged in the case, Bock expressed worry about Said, who she wrote “hates white people and has shit to take me down.”
On cross examination, defense attorney Ken Udoibok asked the FBI agent if Bock had asked anyone to conceal anything.
“Not in this text communication,” Wilmer replied.
Since 2022, 35 of the 70 defendants charged in the wider case have pleaded guilty, and another five were convicted at the earlier trial. Udoibok maintains that Bock had no knowledge of fraud perpetrated by meal site operators and others at Feeding Our Future.
Federal prosecutors allege that Said’s restaurant was the largest of several hundred fraudulent meal sites that Feeding Our Future sponsored, and also operated as a phony vendor to other sites. Altogether, investigators contend that Said and his business partners siphoned $16 million from publicly funded meal programs by submitting fraudulent meal count sheets and invoices.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors have showed jurors dozens of checks from Feeding Our Future that Bock signed and that were paid to meal site operators. Bank records that the FBI subpoenaed during the investigation and prosecutors presented as evidence show that Bock had sole control of the Bank of America account and was the lone signatory.
On January 10, 2022, less than two weeks before the FBI raided Bock’s home, office and more than two dozen other locations, she appeared indignant in texts to Said after spotting an Instagram post from a young man connected to Safari. In a series of three photos, the man, who was not charged, is seen holding a stack of cash for the camera.
“This little boy flexing like he is some rapper. Boy sells carrots. Get real,” Bock wrote.
Six days later, Bock was irate when she learned of a separate social media post from Abdihakiim Osman Nur, a Somali-American activist, who posted video of a lavish wedding of a Feeding Our Future employee.
In a message accompanying the video, Nur wrote that several meal program participants “gifted the young woman in charge of coordinating the program” nearly $100,000 in gold jewelry.
“We cannot close our eyes to such corruption which will put our entire community’s name in the news as fraudsters and criminals when we only have a few bad apples,” Nur added.
In the video, shown to jurors, wedding guests are seen placing the jewelry into a purple basket and delivering it to the bride on a gold-colored cart.
Defense attorney Udoibok pressed Wilmer on whether the FBI investigated the value of the gold.
“So you don’t know if it was real or fake gold?” Udoibok asked.
“My understanding is, it was real,” the agent responded.
“Did your investigation lead you to believe that the gold was given to Ms. Bock?”
“My understanding is, it was given to the woman who just got married,” Wilmer said.
In a Jan. 16, 2021, text to Said, Bock again threatened to take legal action, this time over negative publicity about the wedding.
“Explain to me why the fuck your social media guy is blasting FOF and my staff all over social media??? That man better get his facts straight or he will be joining me in court. I do not play when it comes to my team or my company,” Bock wrote. “One of my employees gets married and now it’s proof that I’m a fraud?!?” she added.
In testimony Monday, Wilmer revealed that on Jan. 19, 2022, the evening before the FBI executed simultaneous search warrants, Wells Fargo inadvertently revealed the still-undercover investigation and removed $196,744 from one of Said’s bank accounts in response to a federal seizure warrant.
Said sent a screen capture from his banking app that included the line “Legal order Federal Bureau of IN” to co-defendant Abdulkadir Nur Salah, who pleaded guilty in January.
Salah replied in a text saying, “That’s FBI.”
“Was he right?” Bobier asked Wilmer.
“He was,” the agent responded.
Bock received the screenshot within hours.
“It signified to us that these individuals are not operating in silos,” Wilmer noted. “It shows that they’re part of a larger scheme together.”
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