Feeding Our Future founder says she ‘relied on’ Minnesota for approving claims, catching fraud

Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock said she “relied on” Minnesota to approve claims sent by her nonprofit and to catch any fraud.Bock, a lifelong Minnesotan who is awaiting sentencing for fraud and bribery convictions, told CBS News that she sought to protect her nonprofit from fraud.
“I wish I could go back and do things differently, stop things, catch things,” Bock said in an interview from her jail cell. “I believed we were doing everything in our power to protect the program.”
The nonprofit Feeding Our Future signed up restaurants and caterers to receive taxpayer money for providing meals to kids. However, prosecutors said that Bock and her nonprofit were part of a $250 million COVID-era effort to defraud a federal program to feed hungry children.
Prosecutors have charged 78 defendants connected to Feeding Our Future, with more than 60 pleading guilty or convicted at trial. Bock is the only defendant who isn’t Somali-American.
Describing the moment she heard the verdict, Bock said, “It was heartbreaking. I believe in accountability. If I had done this, I would’ve pleaded guilty. I wouldn’t have gone to trial. I wouldn’t have put my children and my family through what we’ve been through. I’ve lost everything.”
A judge last month ordered her to forfeit more than $5 million in proceeds from the fraudulent scheme. Most of the millions of dollars that federal officials seized from her were sitting in a bank account for Feeding Our Future, and Bock denied that she personally lived a lavish lifestyle.
Bock said she was doing everything possible to root out fraud, and terminated agreements with dozens of entities she believed were cheating the system.
“I was the only one that stopped a claim and said, ‘This is fraudulent,'” Bock said. “There are tens of millions of dollars in claims that we did not pay, that we refused.”
Feeding Our Future submitted $3.4 million worth of meal claims in 2019. Two years later, the nonprofit submitted nearly $200 million. Bock attributed the increase in claims to the looser guidelines during the COVID pandemic that allowed parents to pick up meals and bring them home. When asked whether the increase in volume raised concerns at the time, Bock claimed she had sign-off from Minnesota officials.
“We relied on the state,” Bock said, adding that local officials, including Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, would often visit the meal sites. “We told the state, this site is going to operate at this address, this time, and this number of children. The state would then tell us that’s approved.” 
Omar has said she was unaware of people defrauding the food program and has condemned the misuse of funds.
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, said state officials at the time weren’t particularly interested in stopping the fraud because the nonprofit was providing at least some food to an important constituency during a time of instability. 
“What is a lie is that they were policing this fraudulent activity at any time,” Udoibok said. “They wanted a scapegoat. She ran the only food program in the state, so they pinned it on her.”
Feeding Our Future became a “sponsor” for two federal nutrition programs funded by the Agriculture Department and overseen by Minnesota’s Education Department that paid for kids’ meals. When the COVID pandemic began, the USDA issued waivers that gave sponsors more flexibility in how they distributed the food. 
“During COVID, for obvious reasons, parents were allowed to come and pick up meals,” Bock said. “So we suddenly were able to reach more children. We were also able to deliver meals to homes.”
While restaurants and caterers, especially from the Somali immigrant community, wanted to sign up, Bock said that state education officials were wary about letting in some of the business that applied. 
“The Department of Education was sitting on the applications,” Bock said. “They were just not processing them.”
Amid the George Floyd protests, Bock filed a lawsuit, alleging the state’s scrutiny of Somali applicants was discriminatory and deprived low-income and minority children access to “desperately needed federal food programs.”
Bock said regarding how she believed state officials received the lawsuit, “nobody wants to be labeled as racist.” 
A settlement was reached in the lawsuit, in which Minnesota’s Education Department agreed to process applications to the meal program “reasonably promptly.” 
“The notion that a state government is paralyzed and has to allow this level of fraud because they were afraid of what I might do in a lawsuit is preposterous,” Bock said.
However, according to a June 2024 report, education officials told the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor that “the threat of legal consequences and negative media attention” intimidated them into easing off. Officials with Minnesota’s Department of Education added that they did act, as they were the ones who referred Bock to the FBI in 2021.

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