An FBI agent testified Monday about a key email from Aimee Bock that prosecutors allege point to her guilt as the ringleader of a $250 million fraud scheme.
FBI Special Agent Jared Kary walked jurors through an email exchange between Bock and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) that prosecutors first presented in court last week. It showed an MDE employee asking Bock about two food sites that were operating at the same address. Both were sponsored by Feeding Our Future, where Bock served as executive director at the time. One of the sites was operated by Feeding Our Future.
The sites each claimed to serve 4,000 children a day at the same address. The MDE email, dated October 2021, asked Bock to double check that both food sites were serving different children.
“This is correct,” Bock wrote in an email reply. “We have verified that it is different youth being served at each of the locations in this building.”
Prosecutors also showed an August 2021 email Bock sent to an MDE official accusing the agency of “mistakenly denied or delayed applications because two different organizations were operating out of the same physical address.”
Prosecutors later showed pictures and video of a graffitied and empty-looking building in south Minneapolis where both food sites were being operated. The footage was from FBI surveillance of the location in December 2021, when both food sites claimed to feed tens of thousands of children.
Kary testified that evidence showed that no one was being fed at the building during the FBI surveillance.
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, attempted to show the jury emails Bock sent to MDE that suggested that Feeding Our Future had moved its site from that building to another location. But every time he tried to admit the emails as evidence, prosecutors objected on grounds of hearsay and foundation.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sided with prosecutors, and ultimately, Udoibok could only ask Kary narrow questions. Udoibok was not allowed to show the emails.
Udoibok asked Kary if he would be surprised that Feeding Our Future had moved its food site out of the building.
“I would be confused, and I would like to see other documentation to support that,” Kary said.
FBI agents raided the building in early 2022, and found “a refrigerator and a little bit of food,” Kary said.
The alleged fraud involved Feeding Our Future receiving federal funds through MDE. Feeding Our Future then distributed those funds to food vendors and food sites, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several organizations in the money chain reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did, or simply never served any at all, in order to receive more federal reimbursement dollars, according to prosecutors.
Bock is charged with three counts of wire fraud and one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and bribery.
She allegedly took just over $1 million for herself by contracting with her boyfriend for maintenance work on Feeding Our Future’s office for $900,000. She also allegedly took a $310,000 kickback in exchange for enrolling a nonprofit into the federal food-aid program.
Lawyers feud at break
After court recessed for a lunchtime break, Udoibok accused Kary of altering a document, leading to a heated exchange between him and several prosecutors. Udoibok made the allegation to Brasel after the jury had exited the courtroom, and said that the metadata of a document prosecutors presented in the case showed that it was modified.
Brasel noted that Udoibok had not raised the concern with the prosecution first, and instructed him to do so. When Brasel exited the courtroom, Udiobok and members of the prosecution team erupted in a shouting match over the matter.
After the lunch break and before the jury entered the courtroom, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson told Brasel that Kary had saved a Google document as a PDF, a type of file format, and had not made any changes to the document itself.
“Obviously, the government didn’t alter the document,” Thompson said, adding that Udoibok’s accusation seemed like an attempt to “smear” Kary.
Brasel quickly considered the matter resolved.
“I was surprised the words that came out of your mouth were to accuse him of altering evidence before bringing it up with prosecution,” Brasel said to Udoibok. “I will leave it at that.”
Another restaurant owner testifies
Abdulkadir Awale testified later Monday about how he involved his three restaurants in the fraud. He said he was approached by Feeding Our Future employee Abdikerm Eidleh in April 2020 to enroll in the federal child nutrition program that released the money to MDE.
He testified that he participated for a few weeks, serving 300 to 400 meals a day with a staff of three or four people and a few volunteers. The work exhausted him and his staff, so he decided to drop from the federal food program.
A few months went by and as the pandemic continued, Abdulkadir Awale said, he couldn’t afford to pay rent or keep his employees. He met again with Abdikerm Eidleh.
“He was telling me that other people stayed with Feeding Our Future while I left,” Abdulkadir Awale testified. “They were making a lot of money. He told me I’m struggling here [and he could] offer to pay rent and pay employees.”
It’s then that Abdikerm Eidleh told him about a different way to work in the food program, Abdulkadir Awale said.
Abdulkadir Awale testified that Abdikerm Eidleh told him people made money by reporting to serve more meals than they actually served.
“It’s not the way I was doing it [before],” he said.
Abdulkadir Awale, who previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the case, used his restaurants to steal $11 million, keeping $2 million for himself.
Abdikerm Eidleh has been charged with several crimes in the case, and has been out of the country.
