Friday February 14, 2025

Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock, right, walks into federal court with her attorney Kenneth Udoibok on Feb. 10. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (HOL) — As the first week of the trial of Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and co-defendant Salim Said concluded, testimony and evidence presented in court shed further light on the scale and depth of the alleged $250 million fraud scheme that rocked Minnesota’s child nutrition program during the pandemic.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors focused on showing jurors how the numbers reported by Feeding Our Future meal sites were implausible. Special Agent Jared Kary testified that surveillance video from Safari Restaurant, a site run by Said, failed to capture the level of activity necessary to support claims that it served up to 6,000 meals daily.

“Approximately how many individuals did you see on a typical day?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Ebert asked Kary.

“It averaged 40 individuals, either coming in their vehicles or walking up,” Kary replied.

The FBI’s investigation also revealed that meal count sheets from various sites never fluctuated significantly—a statistical anomaly prosecutors argued was further proof of fraud. St. Paul Public Schools’ Nutrition Services Director, Stacy Koppen, testified that no school cafeteria operated at such consistently high capacity, making the Feeding Our Future claims highly improbable.

The investigation into Feeding Our Future resulted in the largest law enforcement operation in Minnesota’s history. In January 2022, FBI agents from across the country assisted in raids on the nonprofit’s headquarters and multiple meal distribution sites.

“Agents from as far as Miami came up. It was the coldest day of the year, so they weren’t very happy,” Kary quipped during testimony.

Authorities executed 1,200 grand jury subpoenas and seized millions of pages of financial records, underscoring the extensive scale of the case.

Jurors also reviewed an email from Feeding Our Future employee Norma Acosta Lopez, who wrote to Bock in December 2021, warning that staff had suspicions about fraudulent activity.

“They strongly believe you are doing fraud, and you are not answering their questions,” Lopez wrote. “So many questions people are afraid to ask because no one wants to question the boss.”

Despite these concerns, Bock allegedly continued the operation. FBI testimony on Thursday detailed an internal meeting in which Bock told employees to stop flaunting their money to avoid detection. Prosecutors claim that multiple Feeding Our Future employees enriched themselves through kickbacks while exploiting federal child nutrition funds.

The government continued laying out the extensive financial paper trail behind the fraud. Prosecutors presented records of 299 meal sites claiming to have served nearly 90 million meals between 2020 and 2021, a figure they called “completely unrealistic.”

Investigators have examined over 4.4 million pages of financial documents so far, seizing $50 million in assets, including homes and luxury vehicles. Prosecutors said the government has recovered approximately $66 million from bank accounts and property linked to fraudulent claims.

During cross-examination, Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, challenged the surveillance evidence, questioning whether the FBI’s cameras failed to capture deliveries made through back exits. While Special Agent Kary acknowledged that the cameras were primarily positioned at the front entrances, he dismissed the possibility that bulk meal distributions of the reported scale could have gone unnoticed.

Udoibok also sought to shift blame, arguing that fraud was conducted by lower-level site operators, not Bock herself. He pressed FBI Agent Kary on whether surveillance cameras might have failed to capture all meal distributions, but Kary dismissed the idea.

“To that volume, that wouldn’t make any sense,” Kary stated.

Udoibok also suggested that some Feeding Our Future sites were wrongly accused, pointing to instances where legitimate meal distributions did occur.

Additionally, testimony revealed that Feeding Our Future’s listed board president, Ben Strayberg, was unaware of his role in the organization until a New York Times reporter contacted him.

“They called me—I had no idea what they were talking about,” Strayberg testified.

Strayberg, a bartender, testified that Bock had asked him to sign what he thought was a petition. However, internal company records listed him as having “extensive knowledge of food sourcing and costs”—a claim he denied, telling the court, “I serve drinks.”

Lul Ali, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing more than $5 million, testified in the trial of Feeding Our Future’s former executive director, Aimee Bock, on February 11, 2025. Credit: Cedric Hohnstadt

Witness: “She Destroyed Us as a Community”

On Wednesday, the court heard testimony from Lul Ali, a former restaurant owner who pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing $5 million through fraudulent meal claims. Ali, a Somali refugee, broke down in tears as she described how Feeding Our Future encouraged entire families to participate in the scheme.

“She destroyed us as a community,” Ali said of Bock. “I’m so upset.”

Ali recounted how she was approached by an intermediary who convinced her to enroll her restaurant as a meal site. She was promised significant financial gain by inflating meal counts and funnelling money to Bock and her associates. Prosecutors presented evidence showing that Ali paid $30,000 per month in kickbacks to Feeding Our Future representatives, including co-defendant Said.

Ali also testified that Bock personally encouraged her to open more food sites, assuring her that “the American Dream is to make money a lot.”

Court proceedings are set to resume Tuesday after a long holiday weekend. Prosecutors are expected to call additional witnesses, including former Feeding Our Future participants who have taken plea deals. Bock has maintained her innocence and argued that she was unaware of fraudulent invoices and meal counts submitted by associates. The trial is projected to last several more weeks, with speculation on whether Bock will take the stand in her own defense.