Aimee Bock, 45, stood before U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel in Minneapolis on Thursday and received a prison sentence of nearly 42 years for her role at the center of a $250 million fraud scheme that exploited federally funded child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sentence, handed down in a courtroom packed with observers, is one of the most severe ever imposed in a pandemic-related fraud prosecution. Bock had been convicted at trial of conspiracy, wire fraud, and bribery.
The Justice Department has described the Feeding Our Future case as the single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the United States. At the heart of the case was a network of shell organizations, phony meal-distribution sites, and fabricated lists of children that prosecutors said Bock and her co-conspirators used to bill the federal government for millions of meals that were never served.
“This was a vortex of fraud and you were at the epicenter,” Brasel told Bock as she imposed the sentence, according to the Associated Press. The judge’s characterization echoed testimony from the trial, where one witness described Bock’s role by saying, “Aimee was a god.”
Bock’s scheme unfolded against the backdrop of pandemic-era changes to the federal meals program. When COVID-19 shuttered schools, the U.S. Department of Agriculture loosened rules so that restaurants and community sites outside schools could distribute food and receive reimbursement. Investigators said Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit Bock ran, exploited that expanded access by recruiting people to create fake sites across Minnesota and then quickly filing claims for meals that were never provided. Reimbursement money flowed through a web of partner organizations, with kickbacks routed back to Bock and others.
Those funds financed international travel, real estate purchases, luxury vehicles, and other lavish spending, according to court records. Bock had long maintained her innocence, but a jury rejected that defense. At Thursday’s sentencing, she offered a brief statement. “I understand I failed,” Bock said. “I failed the public, my family, everyone.”
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, argued for a sentence of no more than three years, saying his client had cooperated with investigators and was not the scheme’s mastermind. He said two co-defendants were the architects of the fraud. But the court rejected that argument. Joe Thompson, formerly the lead prosecutor on the case, said outside the courtroom that Bock “did everything she could to earn this long sentence.”
One co-defendant, Abdiaziz Farah, was sentenced last August to 28 years in prison. Farah had claimed to serve thousands of meals per day from sites that investigators said were actually parking lots or empty commercial spaces.
The fraud cases have rippled far beyond the courtroom. Former President Donald Trump seized on the Feeding Our Future investigation to justify a surge of federal agents into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, targeting immigrants in an operation that produced repeated confrontations and the deaths of two residents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Trump, who has long made derogatory statements about Somalis, posted on social media that Minnesota was “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” and that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from.”
Bock is white, while the U.S. Attorney’s Office has said the overwhelming majority of defendants in the overlapping food fraud cases are of Somali descent. Most are U.S. citizens. At least 65 people have now been convicted in the series of investigations, which began under the Biden administration.
The political reverberations extended to Minnesota’s state government. State auditors found that the Minnesota Department of Education had received numerous complaints about Feeding Our Future but often directed the group to police itself. In January, Democratic Governor Tim Walz announced he would not seek reelection after sustained criticism from Trump over theft in federally funded state programs.
MSI previously reported that fraud probes in Minnesota were continuing as federal agents raided child programs in late April. The latest charges, unsealed this week, show the investigation remains active and has expanded into Medicaid services.
The new cases target alleged fraud across seven state-managed Medicaid programs totaling $90 million in losses, according to federal prosecutors. Among those charged is Fahima Mahamud, the CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, a Minneapolis childcare center. Prosecutors allege that over three years, Mahamud’s organization received approximately $4.6 million in reimbursements for services provided to people who never made required copayments. Mahamud had earlier pleaded not guilty to separate charges related to meal fraud. A message seeking comment from her attorney was not immediately returned Thursday.
Two additional defendants face charges of conspiring to obtain $975,000 in Medicaid subsidies for housing services that prosecutors said were never provided. Two others are accused of billing Medicaid for $21.1 million in autism therapy that was either unnecessary or not delivered, allegedly paying families up to $1,500 per child per month to add names to the program.
James Clark, the inspector general of Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, said the state helped build the cases. Since 2025, he said, payments to more than 600 providers have been halted because of fraud allegations.
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald addressed the ongoing investigation after Thursday’s sentencing. “We will claw back every dollar you have stolen from the American people,” he said, noting that the government dispatched additional prosecutors and agents to Minnesota this year. One of the newly charged defendants, the FBI said, jumped from a fourth-floor balcony in an attempt to evade arrest.