Feeding Our Future investigation expands with search of St. Paul nonprofit

The Feeding Our Future meal fraud investigation is expanding. Federal agents on Thursday searched the offices of the New Vision Foundation, a St. Paul nonprofit allegedly connected to a sprawling scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from two taxpayer-funded nutrition programs for children in need during the pandemic.

Agents were seen removing computers and other items from NVF’s Vandalia St. offices early Thursday afternoon. According to its website, NVF was founded “to create pathways to success by motivating disadvantaged youth in Minnesota through coding and digital literacy classes.”

But in a search warrant, FBI Special Agent Travis Wilmer writes that NVF operated two phony meal distribution sites under the sponsorship of the defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future.

Like dozens of other organizations and businesses that were part of the scheme, NVF allegedly submitted fraudulent reimbursement requests to the Minnesota Department of Education for meals that it never served.

The department administers the U.S. Department of Agriculture meal programs on the state level and was the subject of a scathing review in 2024 from Minnesota Legislative Auditor Judy Randall, who said the department was lax in its oversight of the programs and left them vulnerable to fraud.

Wilmer writes that Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock applied to enroll NVF as a meal site in February 2021. Within weeks of enrolling, NVF claimed to be “serving meals to more than 3,000 children per day.” Over an eight-month period in 2021, NVF allegedly submitted claims for more than a million meals at its Vandalia St. headquarters.

But according to the search warrant, employees of Repowered, a neighboring nonprofit that recycles electronics and provides jobs to recently-incarcerated people, “told law enforcement that they never saw any children at New Vision Foundation — either being served meals or otherwise.”

Because Repowered includes some registered sex offenders on its staff, “Repowered employees said that children could not be present at New Vision Foundation,” Wilmer writes.

Federal prosecutors have not filed charges against NVF’s leaders, who couldn't be reached for comment by email or telephone.

The search warrant also alleges that NVF ran a second fraudulent meal site in Waite Park that claimed to have served more than 112,000 meals to children in November 2021 alone.

Wilmer writes that NVF used phony invoices to back its reimbursement claims, including a $33,000 invoice for produce, dairy products, and rice payable to “Campus Trading & Supplies, LLC.” When investigators went to the Eden Prairie address listed for the business, they found an apartment complex, not a food warehouse.

Forensic accountants, who’ve played a key role in the investigation, say that Campus Trading’s manager was on the payroll of NVF, and the nonprofit also paid more than $2.2 million over a 10-month period to a small storefront restaurant on Franklin Ave. in Minneapolis that had a “vendor contract” with NVF.

The investigation into Feeding Our Future first became public in early 2022, when investigators executed search warrants at Feeding Our Future’s headquarters and two dozen other locations. Later that year, a federal grand jury returned the first batch of indictments in the case.

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office has charged 70 people so far. Thirty-eight have pleaded guilty and another seven — including ringleader Aimee Bock — were convicted at trial. Bock is jailed and awaiting sentencing.

Of the four defendants sentenced to date, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel imposed prison terms ranging from 3 1/2 to 17 1/2 years.

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