Aimee Bock will likely face a long prison term when she’s sentenced this morning in the Feeding Our Future fraud, legal experts say.
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. Bock could face up to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel will determine a sentence after reviewing arguments from Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, and federal prosecutors.She is scheduled for sentencing at 9 a.m. Thursday in federal court in downtown Minneapolis.
“I’m nervous,” Udoibok recently told Sahan Journal. “My paralegal is nervous. [Bock’s] nervous. It’s a big weight on our shoulders, collectively.”
Prosecutors want Bock to serve 50 years in prison. Udiobok is asking Brasel to impose a much more lenient prison term of just over three years.
Legal experts expect Bock will get the highest sentence of any of the 78 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.
Bock served as executive director of the non-profit, Feeding Our Future, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as it siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money to several bogus nonprofits and existing nonprofits.
A jury found Bock guilty last year of seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and federal programs bribery.
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 a recent interview with Sahan Journal that they haven’t changed their positions.
Fifteen of the 64 defendants who have pleaded guilty or who were convicted at trial in the Feeding Our Future case have been sentenced.
Abdiaziz Farah, who co-owned Shakopee-based Empire Cuisine, received the longest sentence so far — 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.
Bock has always argued that she was taken advantage of by bad actors working directly below her.
Another argument frequently made by Bock and Udoibock is that the amount of money federal prosecutors accuse her of stealing for herself — $1.9 million — is small in comparison to what other defendants stole.
The fact that Bock didn’t take as much money as other defendants will not likely result in a lower sentence, according to Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor and current law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
“Usually, a sentence like this is going to be staked to the amount of a loss, not the amount gained,” Osler told Sahan Journal.
Bock will be connected to most of the total loss because she was the head of Feeding Our Future, and because so much of the fraud went through her organization, Osler said.
“The judge has a lot of discretion in sentencing a case like this,” Osler said. “I expect that the judge will be swayed most by the role she played in making everything happen.”
Bock took the stand during her trial, testifying for two days in her defense. Her statements on the stand could lead to a harsher prison sentence if the judge concludes that she lied under oath.
“There’s a potential that she can get obstruction of justice for that,” Osler said.
Case brought national attention to Minnesota
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, ramping up the effort into Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration crackdown in U.S. history. The effort stretched into 2026, and saw federal immigration agents fatally shoot two U.S. citizens, racially profile residents and cause widespread fear.
“It is on account of this case that the president sent federal officers into Minnesota. Two people are dead. A slew of people are hurt. Many lives are overturned, and Minnesota is viewed as a state where fraud is prevalent,” Udoibok said.
Some now view the entire Somali community as synonymous with fraud, Udoibok added. Bock is white; most of the 78 defendants charged in the Feeding Our Future fraud are Somali.
“It’s very difficult to compartmentalize,” Udoibok said of the case’s outsized impact on Minnesota. “Bock felt long ago that if she had a way of undoing it, by reflection, she would have taken a different path.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
