Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson asked Bock whether she signed documents linked to the $250 million fraud, and repeatedly pressed her about the large number of meals reportedly served in order to receive federal reimbursement.
Friday 14, March 2025 {HMC} A federal prosecutor began an aggressive cross-examination of Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock Thursday morning in an attempt to counter her claims that she tried to combat fraud.
Bock remained defiant during several hours of tense back and forth exchanges with Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, maintaining that she followed the law.
Thompson highlighted Bock’s signature on all checks and applications submitted by Feeding Our Future for participation in federal child nutrition programs designed to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thompson asked Bock whether she signed off on the applications and other documents businesses submitted through Feeding Our Future reporting the number of children they fed.
“Yes or no? Yes or no?” Thompson asked.
“Yes I signed it, and there was no intentional misinformation,” Bock said.
Bock’s cross- examination came on her third day of testimony, and is scheduled to continue into Friday. Bock is accused of leading a $250 million fraud scheme involving 69 other co-defendants. She is charged with four counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and bribery.
Thompson peppered Bock with questions about high meal counts from various sites, many of which claimed to serve more than 4,000 meals a day.
“Every single day?” he asked repeatedly about the number of meals the food sites reported serving.
“Yes,” Bock said.
Thompson also asked about the number of meals reported by Safari Restaurant, whose co-owner at the time, Salim Said, is being jointly tried with Bock. Safari was one of the largest food sites working with Feeding Our Future.
“That’s a pretty extraordinary number,” Thompson said of Safari’s claims that it served 5,000 meals a day in the summer of 2020. “You would agree, wouldn’t you, Ms. Bock?”
“Now, yes,” Bock testified. “At the time, no.”
The alleged fraud involved Feeding Our Future receiving federal funds through the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). Feeding Our Future then distributed those funds to food vendors and food sites such as Safari, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children during the pandemic.
Working through Feeding Our Future, several organizations reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did, or never served any at all, in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors.
Thompson highlighted how Bock clicked a checkmark on every meal claim that she submitted to the state on behalf of Feeding Our Future’s food sites. The checkmark certified that the numbers Bock submitted were accurate under penalty of perjury, according to copies of the meal claims shown in court.
Bock, however, said the checkmark had a different meaning.
“I certified I had the [meal count] records available, and they were classified in the right category and that there was no deliberate misrepresentation,” Bock said of the checkmark.
Bock testified multiple times that she didn’t look at meal counts from food sites that were emailed to her, but instead relied on her staff to review them and submit them to an online system called CenterPilot. Bock said she would use the meal counts entered into CenterPilot to support the meal claims she filled out and submitted to the government for federal dollars.
When Thompson showed emails Bock personally received with inflated meal counts from food sites, Bock said she forwarded those to Feeding Our Future’s meal claims department to handle.
“Are you sitting on the stand right now and saying you never once looked at a meal count?” Thompson asked.
“I looked at them, but not often, usually as responding to questions from staff,” she said.
Bock denied knowing that Feeding Our Future’s food site operators were spending money on big houses, luxury cars and commercial properties. Thompson at one point asserted that Bock rode in luxury cars herself.
“I have been an unwilling passenger in a Lamborghini,” she responded.
She also denied testimony from multiple prosecution witnesses who said at trial that she told food site operators to stop flaunting their money because it could draw suspicion.
Bock testified that she was passionate about feeding underprivileged children.
“I even told the [FBI] agents at my house that I’d do anything to help catch people committing fraud,” Bock said.
“Well, you did a heck of a job of it, Ms. Bock,” Thompson said.
Thompson also countered Bock’s earlier testimony that she shut down several food sites because she suspected them of fraud. He presented emails showing that MDE denied some food sites like Sambusa King and Lido Restaurant in the spring of 2020, and that Feeding Our Future had actually appealed the denial of those food sites. Thompson then showed a text message Bock sent explaining that MDE was ending the sites because they were restaurants.
Bock said that Feeding Our Future was contractually obligated to appeal all denials of food sites even when it didn’t want to.
“That is a part of an agreement we made with sites, that we would represent them,” she said.
Bock then maintained that MDE denied the sites for the summer program, and Feeding Our Future then decided to terminate them “because they were no longer needed.”
Bock says she tried to stop fraud
Thursday was the first time prosecutors were able to question Bock at trial. She began her testimony last Friday afternoon under direct questioning from her attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, and resumed that testimony yesterday.
Bock testified under Udoibok that she detected fraud and tried to stop it. She continued some of that testimony Thursday morning. She acknowledged that she could not stop all fraud from taking place under Feeding Our Future’s watch.
“Investigations were sometimes really difficult,” Bock testified.
She said she looked into suspiciously high meal claims, but that when she asked food vendors if they provided the claimed amount of food and followed up with wholesalers to see if food was purchased, she was often told yes. Bock testified that now that she’s seen bank records, she agrees that fraud occurred.
“They were all saying yes, because, as the government has been able to show, they were all in on it together,” she said of the businesses that worked through Feeding Our Future to access federal food-aid money.
Bock denied all the charges under questioning from Udoibok, which sought to portray her as a concerned watchdog rather than a benefactor. Prosecutors accused Bock at trial of making $1.9 million through the fraud, but she testified under her attorney that she never asked for any kickbacks or bribes, or knowingly submitted false meal claims to the state. It wouldn’t be worth the risk, she told the court.
“Nothing would be worse or worth ever being separated from my children,” she said Thursday through muffled tears.
The prosecution launched five weeks of testimony against Bock, whose testimony offered explanations for the money she allegedly stole.
“Did you devise any scheme to mislead the public to your benefit?” Udoibok asked Bock Thursday.
“No, it was just the opposite,” Bock testified. “I was trying to expose what we were seeing. I was trying to take it seriously.”
Bock is being tried alongside former Safari Restaurant co-owner Salim Said.
Under questioning from Udoibok, Bock also provided explanations for text message evidence the government presented against her earlier in the trial.
In February 2019, Bock exchanged messages with Feeding Our Future employee Hadith Ahmed about rumors being circulated by a woman running a meal site. Feeding Our Future worked quickly to shut down the rumors that the organization wasn’t promptly paying out reimbursement claims.
“We may have become the mob,” Bock messaged Hadith Ahmed.
The message was a “sarcastic joke,” Bock testified Thursday.
“When we had problems, we would aggressively attack and eliminate,” Bock said.
She described herself as such a stickler for the rules that she refused to take home a sample vial of perfume that an employee tried to give her.
