In the week before her sentencing, Aimee Bock did media rounds blaming the state, federal government and people who worked under her for the biggest fraud in Minnesota history.
But just before she was sentenced Thursday morning, a tearful Bock publicly apologized for the first time for the $400 million Feeding Our Future fraud. Dressed in a lime green sweatshirt and sweatpants, her feet shackled and hair tied back in a ponytail, Bock sobbed through her brief statement to the court before she learned how much time she’d serve in prison.
“I just want to tell everyone how sorry I am that this happened,” she said. “I understand that I failed the public, I failed my family, I failed everyone … I never meant to cause any harm. I believed in everything I was doing and made so many mistakes.”
Bock’s statement came after U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel rejected Bock’s attempts to distance herself from the millions that were fraudulently taken from the federal government, and after a federal prosecutor argued that Bock never took responsibility for leading the largest fraud in state history.
After Bock’s tearful plea, Brasel handed down a sentence of 41.6 years in prison — far from the three years Bock’s attorney had requested for his client. Prosecutors asked for 50 years. Bock had faced up to life in prison.
“This was a vortex of fraud and you were at the epicenter,” Brasel told Bock. “You committed one of the largest frauds with far-reaching implications in state history. I see in you the opposite of remorse. You continue to blame others.”
Bock kept her head down throughout the sentencing, staring at her desk and occasionally shaking her head slightly at statements prosecutors made about her guilt. Bock’s sentencing began at 9 a.m. Thursday in federal court in downtown Minneapolis. Her sentence was handed down about 10:30 a.m.
Judge rebukes Bock’s ‘self-aggrandizement’
Bock, 45, was convicted last year as the ringleader of the estimated $400 million federal food aid fraud that dominated Minnesota headlines for the past four years. In Bock’s trial, prosecutors attributed $242 million of the stolen money directly to Feeding Our Future and said Bock was responsible for it because she led the organization as its executive director.
A jury found Bock guilty of seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and federal programs bribery.
Prosecutors have said they believe $400 million was stolen through the fraud, but have not been able to directly track every dollar.
Before the sentencing, Udoibok attempted to absolve Bock of sole responsibility for the $242 million loss. He argued that Bock’s personal gain, which federal prosecutors listed as $1.9 million, was minimal in comparison, and added that scores of other fraudsters benefited more. He said in court Thursday that state regulators “did not conduct proper oversight,” and argued that people working directly under Bock took advantage of the situation.
In delivering her sentence, Brasel emphasized that when state regulators tried to stop funding Feeding Our Future over suspected fraud, Bock filed a lawsuit claiming racism.
“The argument that you tried to prevent fraud is puzzling at best,” Brasel said. “The evidence shown at the trial was quite the opposite.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Kline argued that Bock took less money than other fraudsters in the case because “much of this was done for Bock’s own sense of importance and own sense of ego.” Kline cited a 2021 event captured on video where Bock was celebrated by others who benefited from the fraud who called her “Sweet Aimee.”
Kline emphasized that Bock submitted every application, signed off on every meal count and signed every check for Feeding Our Future’s more than 200 food sites. She also controlled the company bank account and used it to pay rent on an inoperative daycare business she owned.
Brasel ultimately agreed with Kline’s assessment, telling Bock that she believed “self-aggrandizement and power” motivated her.
Legal experts said before Thursday that they expected Bock to receive the highest sentence of any of the other defendants in the case.
“If the highest sentence in this series to date is 28 years, I would expect Bock will get more than that by a significant amount,” former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger told Sahan Journal.
This is because Bock played a leadership role in the fraud, he said.
“If she’s the one who put the scam together and provided a vehicle through which other people could also commit significant fraud, then she’s a ringleader,” Heffelfinger said.
The fraud was simple at its core
The money in the Feeding Our Future case came from two federal programs used to feed children and adults in daycare and afterschool programs: the Child and Adult Care Program and the Summer Food Service Program. Feeding Our Future played gatekeeper to these dollars for hundreds of nonprofits. The nonprofits submitted meal counts to Feeding Our Future, which would then submit them to the federal government for reimbursement.
The fraud was simple in its foundation: Some organizations allegedly reported serving more meals than they actually did in order to receive more federal money. Some never actually served meals.
Udoibok and Bock have maintained that she was innocent and tried to stop the fraud once she identified it. He said in an interview with Sahan Journal last week that they hadn’t changed their positions.
Bock took the stand during her trial, testifying for three days in her defense. She has always argued that she was taken advantage of by bad actors working directly below her.
Brasel accused Bock Thursday of lying during her testimony, arguing that she lied on the stand about how she investigated fraud at her company and how she recruited her board members, among other details.
“I very much respect a defendant’s right in the constitution to take the stand and deny their crimes, but Ms. Bock went far beyond this and committed perjury,” Brasel said.
Nine remaining defendants
To date, 66 of the case’s 78 defendants have either pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury. Charges were first filed in the fall of 2022. A jury acquitted two defendants in 2024, and one defendant died in 2023.
That leaves just nine defendants with pending cases. Prosecutors have not charged new defendants in the case since last fall.
The case started a chain reaction that brought heated national scrutiny to Minnesota, resulting in federal fraud investigations into other social services and eventually prompted a right wing influencer to create a viral video late last year that drew the attention of President Donald Trump.
On the guise of cracking down on fraud, the Trump administration sent federal immigration agents to Minnesota in late 2025 to investigate Somali residents. Most of the defendants in the case are Somali.
The effort ramped up into Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration crackdown in U.S. history. It stretched into 2026, and saw federal immigration agents fatally shoot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, racially profile residents and cause widespread fear.
Sixteen of the Feeding Our Future defendants have been sentenced, leaving 49 people convicted who are still awaiting sentencing.
Abdiaziz Farah, who co-owned Shakopee-based Empire Cuisine, received the second-longest sentence — 28 years. The sentence for Abdiaziz, who also played a key role in a failed attempt to bribe a juror from his trial, is one of the longest prison sentences for any white collar criminal in Minnesota history.
Three defendants have avoided prison time altogether, instead serving probation. Two of them were low-level players and one was a mid-level player who pleaded guilty, cooperated with the government’s investigation and testified at trial against Bock.
All of the original prosecutors on the case have since left the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, with the exception of Joe Teirab, who came back to the office earlier this year after departing in 2023. Teirab now serves as First Assistant U.S. Attorney, the number two position to U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen.
Despite the large number of unsentenced defendants and a short-staffed U.S. Attorney’s Office, some legal experts expect the remainder of the Feeding Our Future cases to resolve sooner than later.
“You’ll see the end of this case before the end of the summer,” Heffelfinger predicted.
That’s because of the “tremendous” pressure from Washington D.C. on the U.S. Attorney’s Office to “get this case done,” Heffelfinger told Sahan Journal.
“This is one of their biggest cases right now. It’s gotten the attention of the president. It’s gotten the attention of the acting Attorney General,” Heffelfinger said. “There is no doubt Dan Rosen will establish whatever manpower is necessary to get this all resolved.”
