MINNEAPOLIS – A jury found the alleged ringleader of a massive pandemic fraud case in Minnesota guilty on all counts Wednesday for her role in a scheme that federal prosecutors say stole $250 million from a program meant to feed children in need.
Aimee Bock — founder of Feeding our Future, the group at the heart of the plot — was one of 70 defendants charged in the overall case, which prosecutors said was the nation's single largest fraud scheme against COVID-19 relief programs.
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The Minnesota case has also drawn attention for an attempt to bribe a juror in an earlier trial and witness tampering in Bock's trial, which began last month. Thirty-seven defendants have already pleaded guilty, while five were convicted in a group of defendants who were tried last year.
The jury also convicted a co-defendant, Salim Ahmed Said, owner of the now-defunct Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis.
Bock, 44, and Said, 36, were charged with multiple counts involving conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery. Said was also charged with money laundering. Bock allegedly pocketed nearly $2 million, while Said was accused of taking around $5 million. They both maintained their innocence and testified at trial.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered them both held without bail pending their sentencing, for which she did not set a date.
“It was the largest COVID fraud scheme in the country, and what Bock and and her co-defendants did was reprehensible.” Lisa Kirkpatrick the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said at a news conference afterward.
“During COVID, while so many were trying to be helpers, Bock and Said were thieves,” she continued. “They used a time of crisis as their golden opportunity to enrich themselves and their criminal partners — outlandishly so. At every step of the way, Bock fought to keep her fraud scheme going. Today her efforts to lie, to blame others, to escape responsibility, all came to an end.”
Bock's attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, said there will be an appeal. While he has not decided what legal grounds might be used as its basis, he told The Associated Press that the jury could not have fairly considered all six weeks' worth of evidence in the few hours they deliberated after getting the case Wednesday morning.
But lead prosecutor Joe Thompson called the scheme “brazen and corrupt” and told reporters it tarnished Minnesota's reputation for good governance and civic mindedness as well as its high quality of life and low crime.
“The Feeding Our Future case has come to symbolize the problem of fraud in our state,” Thompson said. “It has become the shame of Minnesota. Hopefully today’s verdict will help turn the page in this awful chapter in our state’s history.”
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who came under heavy criticism from Republicans who said his administration should have caught the fraud earlier, told reporters he remains “furious” with “criminals that preyed on the system that was meant to feed children.” But he pointed out that nobody in state government, which administered the federal funding, was ever charged in the case.
“We just need to make sure that we put up more firewalls, more security, more ability to make sure that these criminals aren’t able to prey on this,” Walz said.
Thompson said authorities have recovered only about $60 million of the $250 million that was stolen. He declined to speculate on what prosecutors might recommend for sentences but said Bock and Said face “substantial” prison time.
The defendants are being tried in several groups. The first trial was marred by an alleged attempt by some defendants and people linked with them to bribe a juror with a bag of $120,000 in cash. That juror went straight to police. That led to tighter security for Bock’s trial and additional precautions ordered by the judge.
Despite all that, an allegation of witness tampering surfaced midway through the proceedings. A defendant scheduled for trial in August approached a government witness who was due to testify against Bock and Said and asked to speak with him in a courthouse bathroom. That witness declined and instead told his lawyer, who informed prosecutors.
That defendant, Abdinasir Abshir, 32, of Lakeville, soon agreed to plead guilty to a wire fraud charge and to have his tampering attempt factored into a longer sentencing recommendation, which isn’t binding on the judge.