Feeding Our Future trial: Aimee Bock admits fraud, just not by her

Yahoo

14-03-2025

The Brief
Alleged Feeding Our Future ringleader Aimee Bock spent the entire day on the witness stand in her federal trial, most of it under aggressive cross-examination by the prosecution.
She denied being part of a conspiracy, committing wire fraud or soliciting bribes.
Bock repeatedly blamed her staff who reviewed the fraudulent meal claims, and testifying she only submitted them.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Aimee Bock, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, agreed that federal prosecutors have proven fraud occurred in the meal sites and vendors she sponsored.
She said it was everyone else conspiring, not her.
When she asked if strangely high meal claims were accurate, "they were all saying yes," she testified. "Because, as the government has been able to show, they were all in on it together."
What she said
Bock was pressed by a prosecutor about the meal counts and invoices that others, who have pled guilty, testified were fake.
"I trusted that the staff had reviewed," she said, repeatedly putting the responsibility on employees at Feeding Our Future.
When she then submitted those fraudulent claims to the state for reimbursement, she said she simply entered the data.
She also signed the submissions, which included language that attested the information was accurate and that deliberate misrepresentation would subject her to prosecution. She said she did not intentionally misrepresent.
"I entered the data," she said, insisting her responsibility was to ensure the forms were fully filled out and "certified that they were claimed in the right category."
Dig deeper
Bock also testified that she only reviewed meal counts and rosters when someone had a question about them.
And for all the rosters now proven to be filled with made-up names from a website, she said she would have had no reason to suspect that because she would have no way to verify them.
Asked, too, about the money transferred from Feeding Our Future to her boyfriend, she explained that was all for work done renovating her offices.
As for the expensive jewelry, vacations and car rentals he paid for with federal food money proceeds, she only conceded "I was an unwilling passenger in a Lamborghini, yes."
Bock returns to the stand Friday. Salim Said's defense will then call a couple of witnesses, possibly Said himself.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday.