Aimee Bock has been sentenced to 500 months in prison for her lead role in a $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded child nutrition programme during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As proven at trial, Ms Bock, 44, was the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, a non-profit organisation that was a sponsor participating in the Federal Child Nutrition Programme. Salim Said, 36, former co-owner of Safari Restaurant, was jointly tried with Ms Bock. 

Together, they oversaw a massive fraud scheme carried out by sites under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship.

As proven at trial, Feeding Our Future employees recruited individuals and entities to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout Minnesota. These sites, created and operated by Ms Bock, Mr Said, and others, fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed. 

Ms Bock and Mr Said created and submitted false documentation, including fraudulent meal counts consisting of fake attendance rosters purporting to list the names and ages of the children receiving meals at the sites each day. 

Feeding Our Future submitted these fraudulent claims to the Minnesota Department of Education and then disbursed the funds obtained through the scheme to their co-conspirators.

To accomplish their scheme, Ms Bock and her co-conspirators created dozens of shell companies to enrol in the programme as food programme sites and to receive and launder the proceeds of their fraudulent scheme. 

In exchange for sponsoring these sites’ fraudulent participation in the programme, Feeding Our Future received more than $18 million in administrative fees to which it was not entitled. 

In addition to the administrative fees, Feeding Our Future employees solicited and received bribes and kickbacks from individuals and companies sponsored by Feeding Our Future. Many of these kickbacks were paid in cash or disguised as “consulting fees” paid to shell companies created by Feeding Our Future employees to make them appear legitimate.

In total, Feeding Our Future opened more than 250 Federal Child Nutrition Programme sites throughout the state of Minnesota, and in doing so, went from receiving and disbursing approximately $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. 

Throughout the course of their scheme, Feeding Our Future fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million in Federal Child Nutrition Programme funds. The defendants used the proceeds of their fraudulent scheme to purchase luxury vehicles, residential and commercial real estate in Minnesota, and to fund international travel.