By Milton Allimadi
Photos: Video\YouTube Screenshots
I followed the media coverage of the alleged Minnesota federal food nutrition program fraud from over 1,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., and I must confess I would have been surprised had Aimee Bock, leader of Feeding Our Future FOF, one of the two non-profits at the center of the government’s allegations, not been convicted.
Aimie Bock: was there selective prosecution?
The “Mastermind”
After all, Ms. Bock was described in press releases by the government as the “mastermind” of the scheme that allegedly bilked the U.S. of $250 million and this label was quickly adopted by media and repeated ad infinitum, never mind that the dollar amount doesn’t seem anchored to facts, as we will see below.
Ms. Bock may as well have shown up in court in an orange jumpsuit by the time her trial commenced more than two years after she was indicted, based on the media coverage.
This is not to suggest there wasn’t massive fraud in the program. In fact, everyone I’ve spoken to tell me that the program was plagued with fraud. However, many also point to selective prosecution—including of the sponsors—and demonization of Somali immigrants, resulting in collective punishment, including of people who may be innocent. They point to “guilt by association,” or “painting all Somalis with one broad brush,” and a “conspiracy by Somalis.”
In the end, the people with least power were the ones who faced prosecution due to the failure of the system that was supposed to detect and prevent fraud, at the highest level, including the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).
Of the 73 people indicted, 72 are Black, and 68, ethnic Somalis, who comprise a good portion of the Minneapolis immigrant community. “With all the checks and balances in the program how can a community with no power pull off a scheme of that magnitude?” a well-educated Somali community leader familiar with the cases, said.
The USDA’s national Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) program is designed to improve access to nutritious meals and snacks for children by supporting food served in schools, after-school programs and child care centers. Its components include the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), and many others.
The USDA partners with state agencies to oversee the program locally. In Minnesota that agency was MDE, which bears ultimate oversight responsibility. MDE, in turn, works with non-profits, such as PiQC and FOF, who have to apply to be admitted as sponsors. Only the sponsors are then allowed to apply for the food distribution sites.
A Tale Of Two Sponsors
The alleged theft of a quarter of a billion dollars was referred to as the “Feeding Our Future,” scandal—named after Ms. Bock’s non-profit, even though a second non-profit, PiQC, led by Kara Lomen, disbursed an equal amount of money in 2021 to the sites it sponsored, according to the government’s indictment.
Why prosecutors and MDE shielded and protected Lomen and PiQC and threw Ms. Bock under the bus is a question that will be explored over the next several weeks. However, it’s clear that MDE was determined to coverup its own abysmal failure to monitor the federal food program and validate all claims, as required by the federal government, before cutting checks to sponsor organizations like FOF and PiQC.
In the end, it appears, MDE passed the buck to the sponsors—although only the head of FOF was prosecuted—and the food providers, many of whom, the government claimed, never served the number of meals they said they did during the pandemic.
The government alleged that the non-profits, FOF and PiQC, submitted highly inflated claims for millions of meals that were never served during the pandemic. These inflated claims led to hundreds of millions of dollars in reimbursements that never should have been paid out. The sponsors, who are allowed to withhold 15% of reimbursements as administrative fees earned money they were not entitled too, the government claimed. The sites, the government charged, also earned millions of dollars they were not entitled to.
Going After Feeding Our Future
Let’s start by examining how the government announced the alleged scheme.
“U.S. Attorney Announces Federal Charges Against 47 Defendants in $250 Million Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme,” the justice department’s Sept. 20, 2022 press release stated. Since PiQC wasn’t mentioned in the headline or in the body of the release, even the alleged food program fraud that was committed through organizations affiliated with Ms. Lomen’s organization were now, implicitly, attributed to FOF.
The $250 million amount proclaimed in the banner headline needs clarification.
Between June 2020 and January 2022, the period in question when disbursements increased exponentially, FOF was reimbursed a total of $239.8 million, according to figures MDE sent me, in response to my inquiries. Over the same time period, PiQC was reimbursed $198 million. So where does the $250 million come from if FOF received $239.8 million?
Where does it come from if FOF and PiQC together were reimbursed $437 million? Was the $250 million the amount allegedly defrauded from the $437 million total disbursements? So why is all of it attributed to FOF, who was reimbursed an amount less than the $250 million?
During the pandemic, the USDA, seeking to expand access to food for more people in need, waived some participation requirements. For example, for-profit restaurants were permitted to participate, in addition to off-site food distribution locations that were not within educational programs. It appeared the government felt it was worth sacrificing some accountability in the interest of feeding more people during the pandemic. The government also never indicated what an acceptable profit margin would be for the for-profit businesses allowed into the program.
Where Was Accountability?
After a sponsor applies for a site and it’s approved by MDE, the site ID associated with the particular sponsor is entered in MDE’s system.
The sites provide monthly documentation to the sponsors showing the number of meals served. After verifying the documentation, officials at the sponsor organizations—such as Ms. Lomen for PiQC and Ms. Bock for FOF—personally certify and submit claims for reimbursements to MDE.
The crux of the federal government’s charges was that numerous sites submitted documentation for inflated numbers of meals served. The sponsors—who are supposed to verify the information—in turn then submitted inflated claims to MDE.
At one point during the pandemic MDE started delaying its decision on whether to approve or reject applications for new sites by FOF, which ultimately led to a lawsuit by the sponsor, a subject to explore in a subsequent column. It’s interesting to note that during deposition for that lawsuit, Daron Korte, an assistant commissioner at MDE who oversees the CACFP program and SFSP was asked by a lawyer for FOF whether MDE had “any reason to suspect there’s been intentional acts of fraud with respect to CACFP or SFSP?” His response: “No.”
In all the reporting, I haven’t seen MDE being taken to task for its own apparent negligence, which is clearly outlined in the Minnesota office of the legislative auditor’s Special Review of June 2024, titled Minnesota Department of Education: Oversight of Feeding Our Future. That report also makes no mention of PiQC or the alleged fraud committed by sites it sponsored. More on that in a future column.
On Jan. 15, 2025, I sent nine questions about the food nutrition program to MDE and one of them was: “Did MDE fulfill all its oversight obligations to prevent the alleged fraud from occurring?”
“MDE is required by law to carefully review all the data it provides to ensure any sensitive information is redacted in the documents to protect individuals’ private information. This process of fully reviewing the requested data can take anywhere from weeks to months,” Anna Kurth, a spokesperson wrote back, completely dodging the accountability question, as is typical with most government agencies.
Ms. Kurth wrote back to me again, nearly six months later, on June 10, 2025 and provided data—part of which I’ve discussed above—about the disbursements by MDE to PiQC and FOF.
Between June 2020 and January 2022, PiQC submitted claims totaling $239,157,268.33, of which $198,119, 628.28, or 83%, was reimbursed, according to the data from MDE. This means MDE must have found problems with 17% of the claims and that’s why those weren’t reimbursed.
Over the same time period, FOF submitted claims totaling $239,794,758.26 and was reimbursed $238,229,392.02, or 99.4%. This means MDE must have found problems with only 0.6% of the claims submitted by FOF and refused to pay them.
Yet, somehow, MDE later discovered that FOF had stolen $250 million—even though the total disbursements to that sponsor was $239.8 million according to MDE’s own data.
Government Protects PiQC and Lomen
Remember how the Sept. 20, 2022 press release never mentioned PiQC or Ms. Lomen? It’s clear from the indictment that the government shielded Ms. Lomen.
Ms. Bock and her organization, FOF are named in the indictment. Ms. Lomen isn’t mentioned and her organization, PiQC, was referred to as “Sponsor A.” Yet the alleged crimes for which Ms. Bock was indicted are identical to what Ms. Lomen did through the organization she led.
Before the pandemic, FOF disbursed about $3.4 million in federal funds to sites under its sponsorship, according to the indictment. During the pandemic, FOF distributed “nearly $200 million” in 2021. “Aimee Bock oversaw a scheme to defraud, carried out by sites under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future,” the indictment elaborated. “Aimee Bock and Feeding our Future sponsored entities that submitted fraudulent reimbursement claims and fake documentation.”
Mind you, these claims must have been verified by MDE since not 100% were approved, as discussed above.
Bock made about $18 million in administrative fees in 2021, according to the indictment. The non-profits are allowed to retain up to 15% of the disbursements as administrative fees. This means Ms. Bock left $12 million on the table that FOF could have earned from the $200 million in reimbursements.
The government also charged “FOF employees” with operating a “pay-to-play” scheme by soliciting bribes to approve participation by sites into the food program. Later, in the first trial, Hadith Ahmed, who testified for the government—and is someone described as a “notorious liar” by defense lawyers—claimed he made as much as $2 million in bribes and that “everybody” at FOF was on the take. Moreover, he was identified as a consultant not an FOF employee.
“Like Feeding Our Future, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sponsor A was a small non-profit that sponsored the participation of daycares and after-school programs in the Federal Child Nutrition Program,” the indictment stated, referring to Ms. Lomen’s PiQC. “The company went from receiving and disbursing approximately $5.6 million in federal funds to sites under its sponsorship in 2019 to more than $200 million in 2021.”
In other words, Ms. Lomen’s PiQC disbursed an amount equal to Ms. Bock’s FOF in 2021, according to the indictment.
“In 2021, sites under the sponsorship of sponsor A claimed to have served more than 80 million meals to children in Minnesota,” the indictment also stated. “Many of the sites operating under the sponsorship of sponsor A fraudulently inflated their claims in order to appear that they were providing more food to children than was true.”
So, even though PiQC submitted claims for 80 million meals—which the government considered inflated—Ms. Lomen was never indicted.
Also, even though it’s not mentioned in any of the press releases, the government has been prosecuting people who were in charge of sites sponsored by PiQC, even though no PiQC employee has been charged.
Was the government operating under some sort of “Lomen Rules?”
Trial By Newspaper Headlines
Ms. Bock wasn’t part of the April 2024 trial of the first seven defendants—all Somalis; all food providers. Yet, since the alleged fraud was dubbed “Feeding Our Future,” she was indirectly on trial.
“Champagne in the Maldives: Prosecutor says defendants in Feeding Our Future trial misused federal funds,” was the headline of an April 29, 2024, article in Sahan Journal.
“First trial in Feeding Our Future fraud case underway,” CBS Minnesota reported on April 23, 2024.
“Attorneys outline cases as first Feeding Our Future trial starts,” MPR News headlined on April 29, 2024.
“First trial in Feeding Our Future federal meal fraud case starts Monday,” the Star Tribune stated on April 20, 2024.
That first trial lasted from April 22 to June 7, 2024. Five defendants were convicted and two acquitted. One of the acquitted was later re-arrested when he was implicated in a scheme with some of the convicted defendants to bribe a juror
$120,000 prior to the verdict.
The Roman Amphitheater
The die was cast. Ms. Bock entered the amphitheater on Feb. 3, 2025.
“Trial of Aimee Bock, alleged leader of Feeding Our Future fraud, begins,” CBS News announced on Feb. 10, 2025.
“Feeding Our Future’s former leader, Aimee Bock, stands trial amid concerns about jury safety,” Sahan Journal reported on Feb. 3, 2025. The sub-headline read: “The court is enforcing some rules to protect juror identities after a trial last year ended with an attempt to bribe a juror with $120,000 in cash,” which, inadvertently or not, linked Ms. Bock to the alleged juror bribe attempt by the defendants in the April 2024 trial.
MPR News stated, on Feb. 3, 2025, “Trial starts for alleged ringleader of massive COVID food fraud.”
“Jury selection to begin for alleged ringleader of $250M pandemic fraud scheme in Minnesota,” NBC News proclaimed on Feb. 3, 2025.
In truth, Ms. Bock’s trial was over even before opening statements were made.
Her court proceedings, together with co-defendant Salim Said’s, lasted for six weeks and ended with guilty verdicts on March 19, 2025 after less than five hours of jury deliberation.
Bock’s Lawyer Udoibok wants conviction vacated or new trial.
Ms. Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, in a post-conviction motion has called for the verdict to be set aside, or for a new trial. “The defendant was convicted because of the crime of others,” the motion states. “The speed with which the jury returned its verdict after six weeks of trial lends credence to the need for a new trial.”
The headline of the government’s post-conviction press release, on March 19, 2025, had a similar ring to the opening act’s press release of Sept. 20, 2022.
“Federal Jury Finds Feeding Our Future Mastermind and Co-Defendant Guilty in $250 Million Pandemic Fraud Scheme,” the headline of the press release declared, in similar flair to the newspaper headlines.
Ms. Bock sits in jail awaiting sentencing.
The department of justice didn’t respond to an e-mail message seeking comment. Emily Asp, a lawyer for PiQC also didn’t respond to an e-mail message seeking comment as to whether Ms. Lomen struck an immunity deal with the government or if PiQC had a deferred prosecution agreement (DFA).
This columnist can be reached via [email protected] with any exclusive tips.
Topics in upcoming columns include: How is it that MDE, with the responsibility to validate claims, still reimbursed tens of millions of dollars in claims, after the date it states it reported suspicion of fraud in the food program to the FBI?
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