Aimee Bock sentenced to 500 months in Feeding Our Future fraud case
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The founder of a nonprofit that’s become synonymous with fraud in Minnesota was sentenced Thursday to 500 months in prison — nearly 42 years — and ordered to pay $243 million in restitution.
Federal prosecutors had sought 50 years in prison for Aimee Bock, who founded and led Feeding Our Future. Last year, a jury convicted Bock of orchestrating what investigators say was the nation’s largest COVID-era fraud scheme.
Bock’s defense attorney Ken Udoibok had argued for a three-year sentence.
Just before U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel read the sentence in a crowded courtroom at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, Bock stood beside Udoibok at the lectern and through tears said she wanted “to tell everyone how sorry I am that this happened. I understand the situation I’m in. I understand the jury’s verdict. I understand that I failed, I failed the public, I failed my family, I failed everyone. It was not something I ever set out to do.”
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But in the past few months, Bock — while in jail — allegedly directed her two adult sons to send confidential court documents from her case to reporters in a last-ditch attempt to claim innocence.
Bock also has said that she tried to stop fraud and was deceived by meal site operators and her own staff, and that the state failed to halt the scheme. But in court, prosecutor Rebecca Kline said that Bock only cut off meal site operators after they failed to pay her kickbacks.
When Minnesota Department of Education questioned the astronomical payouts, “Bock responded not by taking a second look, she instead filed lawsuits against the state to ensure that MDE would back down and not look under the hood.”
Kline then held up a T-shirt with the slogan “FOF feeds our kids, MDE won’t” from a demonstration that Bock staged in 2021 to protest the state’s withholding of funds.
“Feeding our Future was feeding no kids, Kline said. “They were feeding the bank accounts of fraudsters. The gaping hole in her narrative is that not one dollar of this fraud would have been possible without her.”
Kline conceded that Bock did not personally pocket as much money as many of her co-defendants, but emphasized that she facilitated all of the fraud.
“Much of this was done for Ms. Bock’s sense of self importance and ego,” Kline said. “She viewed herself as the center of it all. Financial greed is not the only factor.”
Judge Brasel told Bock that she was at the epicenter of a “vortex of fraud” — and that when given opportunities to do the right thing, she instead doubled down.
“When the state raised concerns about fraud you didn’t help, you cried racism and filed a lawsuit,“ Brasel said. “A sentence of less than 500 months would not do justice to the people of Minnesota, who were in a very real sense the victims of this fraud.”
Thursday’s sentencing came more than a year after a jury convicted Bock on all seven counts of wire fraud and bribery following more than five weeks of testimony.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who resigned from the Justice Department in January, returned to court and watched Bock’s sentencing from the gallery. After the hearing, Thompson said Bock did everything she could to earn a lengthy sentence.
“The judge found what we all knew, which was that Feeding Our Future was entirely fraudulent, and that Aimee Bock had lied and committed fraud from step one all the way to the present and even to today.”
Speaking to reporters separately, Udoibok said that he disagrees with the sentence but has yet to discuss a possible appeal with Bock.
“She’s a brilliant woman. She has flaws. But her flaws don’t justify 42 years in prison.”
Bock, 45, grew up in Cottage Grove and has a degree in elementary education. After working as a substitute teacher and in childcare, she moved into the nonprofit world.
A decade ago, she founded Feeding Our Future. When the pandemic disrupted daily life in 2020, prosecutors say Bock exploited relaxed oversight and emergency rule changes in the Child and Adult Care and Summer Food Service programs. Feeding Our Future enrolled dozens of restaurants and small nonprofits as meal distribution sites, even though many served little or no food.
Feeding Our Future collected about $43 million at the start of the pandemic. By the following year, prosecutors say Bock and her co-defendants had claimed nearly $200 million in taxpayer money.
The federal funds flowed through the Minnesota Department of Education, which administers the nutrition programs at the state level.
“Frankly, MDE wasn’t prepared to deal with a fraud like this,” said Deputy Legislative Auditor Katherine Theisen.
After Bock was indicted, Theisen and her team spent 18 months examining how the state allowed so much money to flow out the door unchecked.
Theisen found no evidence that state workers or elected officials personally benefited from the fraud. But she said MDE repeatedly failed to act, even as Feeding Our Future claimed to serve millions of meals in a state with about 1.3 million children.
“We saw time and time again where MDE raised concerns about Feeding Our Future’s operations or missed opportunities or missed red flags,” Theisen said, “leading to it not taking the actions that it had the authority to take all along.”
For nearly two years, prosecutors say Bock and her co-conspirators submitted fake invoices, suspiciously round meal counts and attendance records listing fictional children.
When MDE tried to cut off payments, Bock briefly prevailed in state court after suing the department for racial discrimination.
Bock is white, but most of the 79 defendants charged in the case are Somali American. Though nearly all are U.S. citizens, President Donald Trump later cited Feeding Our Future and related Medicaid fraud allegations as justification for a federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.
White-collar criminologist Bill Black says the scheme was massive but not especially sophisticated. Black, who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, previously worked as a banking regulator investigating savings and loan fraud.
“You don’t need super sophisticated accounting or tax analytics,” Black said. “This is people creating fake documents. And the fake documents won’t stand up to even five minutes of inquiry.”
The fallout from the case has reshaped Minnesota politics and government oversight. The scandal factored into Gov. Tim Walz’s decision not to seek a third term, and lawmakers recently approved a new inspector general’s office aimed at preventing future fraud in state social service programs.
