Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to order the ringleader of the $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal, the largest known pandemic-era fraud scheme in Minnesota, to pay millions of dollars in restitution.
Aimee Bock, 45, should pay $5.2 million for her involvement in the scheme, prosecutors said in a Dec. 19 court filing requesting a judge to issue a forfeiture order. Most of the money prosecutors are seeking is in a $3.5 million Bank of America account seized by the government during its investigation.
Bock was convicted earlier this year for stealing federal money from the state through fraudulent meal reimbursement claims to the Minnesota Department of Education. The money was supposed to provide meals to children in need during the COVID-19 crisis.
Bock and 77 others were accused of claiming nearly a quarter-billion dollars in reimbursements for millions of meals they never served. More than 50 defendants have been convicted as of mid-December, but less than half of the money has been recovered.
“As the Director and sole person in control of FOF, Bock was the indispensable leader of the food program fraud scheme and conspiracy,” FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase wrote in the forfeiture filing. “She submitted all or nearly all of the claims that caused those payments to be made.”
Bock, co-defendant, remain in custody
Bock and codefendant Salim Ahmed Said, co-owner of the now-closed Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, which was one of the main locations for fraudulent claims, were convicted in March.
Bock and Said, who was 36 at the time of his conviction in March, have not yet been sentenced and remain in custody.
The remainder of the $5.2 million restitution request against Bock seeks payments for various deposits and payments made to entities tied to the scheme as well as “bribes and kickbacks” related to fraud.
At trial this year, prosecutors said Bock had pocketed about $2 million.
Recovering funds
There has been some progress in recovering stolen money since the first charges in the Feeding Our Future case in September 2022.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who has been leading the federal prosecutions in Minnesota fraud cases, said on Thursday that approximately $60 million to $70 million had been recovered so far.
Of that amount, around $30 million is cash from bank accounts, Thompson said. The remainder is in real estate and vehicles.
“We seize assets from many people if they have money in bank accounts. We’re very aggressive in seizing those funds if they purchase real estate, especially if they purchased it without financing,” he told reporters at a news conference announcing charges in Medicaid fraud cases. “There’s many multi-million dollar properties that were purchased outright with no financing, no mortgage. And so we’re going to get a considerable amount back on that.”
The overall recovery estimate amount is up from $50 million in October 2024.
Unclear how much money will be recovered
It’s unclear just how much of the money the federal government will be able to recover from the Feeding Our Future defendants or those charged in the Medicaid-related schemes this year.
Some of the Feeding Our Future defendants’ circumstances illustrate the challenge.
Mohamed Jama Ismail, convicted at trial last year on charges of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering, took about $2 million, according to federal prosecutors.
Ismail was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison and was ordered by the judge to pay restitution. But at least $850,000 may never be recovered because it’s out of the reach of U.S. authorities in Chinese investments and real estate in Kenya and Somalia.
“He has never agreed to return the federal child nutrition program funds he sent abroad back to the United States,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “Because of his crime, he will leave prison a wealthy man.”
In another case, defendants Said Ereg and his wife, Najmo Ahmed, operators of Evergreen Grocery and Deli in South Minneapolis, got more than $4.2 million in reimbursements and sent $2.5 million to accounts controlled by foreign companies, according to prosecutors.
New fraud cases
Last week, federal prosecutors announced six new charges in alleged schemes tied to state-administered Medicaid programs. Thompson described fraud in Minnesota as “industrial scale” and estimated half or more of the $18 billion paid out since 2018 in 14 “high-risk” programs could have been lost to fraud.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has come under increasing pressure to address fraud in government programs, said he hadn’t seen any evidence of that scale of theft.
Officials with the state Department of Human Services continued to press back against Thompson’s estimate at a Monday briefing, saying the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had never raised concerns about that level of fraud.
“I could see potentially there being hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud in our programs if you stretch that out through several years,” said DHS Inspector General James Clark.
“No one at DHS has previously heard anything from our federal partners at CMS or otherwise even remotely approaching the $9 billion figure.”
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