Feeding Our Future trial: Board treasurer testifies he had no idea he was on board

Yahoo

27-02-2025

The Brief
Jamie Phelps met Aimee Bock socially and testified she did ask him about being on her board. He told her he'd be happy to help.
But he said he never heard more about it until he saw his name in the newspaper after Feeding Our Future was raided by the FBI in 2022.
He is the second board member to testify to this. A St. Paul bartender said the same thing in the trial's first week.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Jamie Phelps told jurors that the first time his name was in the newspaper was after his team broke the distance record for the Red Bull Flugtag in St. Paul, where homemade gliders are launched into the Mississippi River.
The second time was after Feeding Our Future came under federal investigation for meal fraud and he discovered he was listed as the organization's treasurer.
Asked by a prosecutor which one he's more proud of, he replied, "We'll go with the Red Bull Flugtag."
What we know
Aimee Bock, the executive director of Feeding Our Future, is on trial for the $250-million meal fraud related to the federal child nutrition program.
Her defense insists she didn't know meal claims and invoices she submitted to the state were false, that she was the victim of operators and vendors lying to her.
Prosecutors showed a number of documents Bock filed with Phelps' name listed as treasurer, including a registration form with his signature. Except, he testified, it was not his signature.
Board meeting minutes that Bock filed with the state noted Phelps approving the non-profit's budget. He'd never attended a meeting because "I was not a board member."
After he was shown yet another document, he was asked how he felt.
"My name is on a sheet that I've never seen before, and I'm in front of a federal court. That's kind of an odd feeling."
The backstory
Phelps said he met Bock socially through his neighbor and at one gathering she'd asked if he'd be on the board of a new company she was starting. He said he'd be happy to help. But he never heard about it again.
He's a mechanic with no accounting or financial background. Would he be suited for a role or treasurer, he was asked. "I'm going to say no."
In the trial's first week, a St. Paul bartender also testified about learning he was on her board only after the investigation began, but not before. He also knew Bock socially.
Their testimony has nothing to do directly with the meal fraud charges Bock faces, but for the prosecution is a way to question her credibility for the jury. If she falsified board documents that she submitted to the state, then it may be easier to believe she falsified the meal program claims, as well.
What else to know
Also on the stand Wednesday, an IRS agent who compared the rosters submitted from various meal sites to the names of kids in the surrounding school districts. Few were real.
In one example, of more than 2,000 names submitted as receiving meals at a St. Cloud meal site, 116 were real. The rest, they discovered, came from a name generation website.
These were meal sites run by Salim Said, who is on trial alongside Bock. He claimed millions of dollars for meals served at his Safari restaurant in Minneapolis, along with a number of other sites across the state operating under a non-profit called Stigma Free LLC.