Woman at Center of Minnesota Fraud Gets 42 Years

A Minnesota nonprofit leader whose group became a shorthand for pandemic fraud is headed to prison for nearly 42 years. A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Aimee Bock, 45, founder of Feeding Our Future, to 500 months behind bars and ordered her to pay $243 million in restitution. Prosecutors had pushed for a 50-year term, calling her the unquestioned mastermind of what they say was the largest COVID-era fraud scheme in the country, MPR News reports. Bock was convicted last year on seven counts of wire fraud and bribery after a five-week trial.

Prosecutors said she used emergency changes to federal child-nutrition programs during the pandemic to route almost $250 million in taxpayer funds through sham meal sites, many of which served little or no food. They said she was at the center of a network that included partner organizations and phony lists of children, the AP reports. "She signed every single fraudulent claim," then-Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson said after the verdict last year. "She cut every single check ... she was involved in taking kickbacks." Outside the courtroom on Thursday, Thompson said, "This case has changed our state forever. Aimee Bock did everything she could to earn this long sentence."

• The money flowed through the Minnesota Department of Education, which an 18-month legislative audit found repeatedly missed warning signs as Feeding Our Future claimed to be serving millions of meals in a state with about 1.3 million children.
• Deputy Legislative Auditor Katherine Theisen said there was no evidence state officials personally profited, but the agency "wasn't prepared to deal with a fraud like this" and failed to use tools it already had.
• The case, which has led to charges against 79 defendants, has reverberated through Minnesota politics, influencing Gov. Tim Walz's decision not to seek another term and prompting lawmakers to create a new inspector general's office to police social service programs. Bock is white but most people charged in the overlapping cases are of Somali descent, the AP reports. President Trump cited the Feeding Our Future case and related fraud cases as a reason for the massive federal immigration enforcement operation in the state.