Aimee Bock Just Got 41 Years for the Largest Pandemic Fraud in U.S. History.
On May 21, 2026, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel sentenced Aimee Marie Bock, founder and former executive director of the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future, to 500 months in federal prison — 41 years and 8 months — plus $243,000,000 in restitution. Bock was convicted at trial in March 2025 on all seven counts: wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal-programs bribery, and federal-programs bribery. Prosecutors asked for 50 years. The defense, led by Kenneth Udoibok, asked for three.
The scheme stole more than $250,000,000 from a USDA pandemic child-nutrition program. Feeding Our Future and a network of allied vendors billed the federal government for 91 million meals claimed served to needy Minnesota children. The actual count of meals served has been described in indictments and at trial as essentially zero. The money went to Mercedes and Bentley dealerships, lakefront mansions, jewelry, and beach-resort property in Costa Rica and Kenya. As of the May 2026 sentencing, 79 defendants had been charged and 65 convicted; by September, those totals had grown to roughly 80 charged and 69 convicted.
The Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor — a nonpartisan constitutional office under Auditor Judy Randall — issued a 120-page special review on June 13, 2024 finding that the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), under Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), failed to act on warning signs known to the department before the pandemic, ignored more than thirty complaints between 2018 and 2021, and resumed payments to Feeding Our Future in April 2021 — after MDE itself had notified the FBI of fraud suspicions. State payments to FOF between April and July 2021 totaled $17,800,000.
- 500monthsFederal sentence (41 yrs 8 mo) — U.S. v. Bock · D. Minn. · May 21, 2026
- $243MrestitutionOrdered May 21, 2026 — DOJ U.S. Attorney's Office, D. Minn.
- $250M+stolenUSDA Federal Child Nutrition Program — DOJ September 2022 indictment
- 91Mmeals on paperFederal indictment — actual count of meals served ≈ zero
- ~80defendantsCharged as of Sept. 2026 (79 at the May 2026 sentencing) · ~69 convicted, 29 sentenced · DOJ, Sahan Journal
- 30+complaints ignoredMN Legislative Auditor: MDE under Gov. Walz (D), 2018–2021
The case kept moving. On Sept. 8, 2026, Judge Brasel sentenced a Shakopee couple, Mekfira Hussein, 42, and Abduljabar Hussein, 45, to a combined 97 months in federal prison — Mekfira got 57 months, at the top of her guideline range; Abduljabar got 40, in the middle of his. Both pleaded guilty in early 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, rather than going to trial. A federal judgment now holds them jointly responsible for $8,886,380 in restitution.
Mekfira ran Shamsia Hopes, a Brooklyn Center nonprofit originally built to assist East African and Oromo immigrants, which she enrolled in the federal Child Nutrition Program under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship at the direction of a Feeding Our Future employee. Abduljabar registered Oromia Feeds LLC in December 2020 as the nonprofit’s food vendor; it took in roughly $5,400,000 of the scheme’s money while spending almost none of it on actual food. Between October 2020 and 2022, the pair claimed to feed up to 5,000 children a day, seven days a week — fabricating meal counts, attendance rosters, and invoices covering more than 3.4 million meals that were never served, and obtaining roughly $8,800,000 in federal funds in the process. Court records show at least $140,000 in kickbacks to a Feeding Our Future employee and $12,000 to Aimee Bock herself, both booked as “consulting fees.” The couple put $173,438 toward paying off their mortgage and bought a 2021 Porsche for $93,250.
“The Husseins stole money that was meant for vulnerable children. Their sentences today reflect my office's commitment to holding those who defraud the American taxpayer accountable.”
Daniel N. Rosen · U.S. Attorney, District of Minnesota (Trump administration) · Sept. 8, 2026
The Husseins are, by the most careful count available, the 28th and 29th people actually sentenced in a case where roughly 80 defendants have now been charged and around 69 convicted — the gap between “convicted” and “sentenced” reflects how many guilty pleas are still waiting on a sentencing date. Neither Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) nor AG Keith Ellison (D-MN) has commented publicly on this specific sentencing; the accountability record tying their administration to the underlying oversight failure remains the one laid out above, in the Legislative Auditor’s report and the House Oversight Committee’s findings.
Judge Brasel — a Trump first-term appointee elevated to the District of Minnesota in 2020 — read the sentence from the bench on the afternoon of May 21, 2026. Bock, 45, stood at the defendant’s table with her attorney. The 500-month term was at the upper edge of what prosecutors had requested. Restitution was set at $243,000,000— money the federal government does not realistically expect to recover, but which attaches as a federal judgment against Bock’s name and any future earnings for the rest of her life.
“This was a vortex of fraud, and you were its epicenter. This was one of the largest frauds this state has ever seen.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel · sentencing of Aimee Bock · D. Minn. · May 21, 2026
At a press conference following the sentencing, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joe Thompson (Trump administration) and DOJ Fraud Section Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald (Trump administration) announced that 15 additional defendants had been charged the same day in parallel schemes valued at roughly $90,000,000. The Bock sentence, McDonald said, was not the closing of the case. It was the next chapter.
“We will claw back every dollar you have stolen from the American people.”
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald · DOJ Fraud Section · May 21, 2026 press conference
The mechanism was simple. In March 2020 the USDA — facing a national pandemic emergency — waived the requirement that meals served under the Summer Food Service Program and the Child and Adult Care Food Program be consumed on-site under in-person supervision. The waivers were necessary; pandemic distance learning made the old rules impossible. They were also catastrophic. State agencies were no longer required to physically verify that meals existed before federal reimbursement flowed.
Feeding Our Future — a small Minneapolis nonprofit Bock founded in 2017 with $3,400,000 in 2018 federal pass-through — became one of two MDE-designated sponsors that submitted reimbursement claims on behalf of a sprawling network of subordinate sites. By 2021 the nonprofit’s federal pass-through had hit $197,900,000 for the year and its registered site count had tripled to 387. Each site claimed to be feeding hundreds, sometimes thousands, of children per day. Most were fronts. Some addresses were vacant strip-mall storefronts; some were second-floor apartments; some did not physically exist.
The September 2022 federal indictment, unsealed by then-U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger (Biden appointee, 2022–2025), described the network in 116 pages. It named 47 defendants and detailed the receipts: cars, real estate, jewelry, foreign property. The Bock-Said trial unsealed a second tier of operational detail. Co-defendant Salim Said, convicted alongside Bock on all 21 counts including 4 of money laundering, ran the largest of the FOF-affiliated meal vendors, Safari Restaurant + Event Center. The combined verdict on March 19, 2025 was guilty on every count put to the jury.
Governor Tim Walz (D-MN)— in office since January 2019. The Minnesota Department of Education sits under his administration. Walz publicly claimed in 2022 that a Ramsey County judge had “ordered” MDE to keep paying FOF; the Minnesota Judicial Branch later issued a formal public statement correcting that claim. No such order existed. MDE resumed payments voluntarily in April 2021 — after notifying the FBI.
Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN) — in office since January 2019. Per sworn Senate Judiciary testimony from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), FOF leadership met with Ellison in late 2021 and asked him to call off state investigators. The meeting, Hawley said, “was all caught on tape.” The AG’s office took no criminal action against FOF prior to the FBI raid.
MDE Commissioner Heather Mueller (Walz appointee, 2021–2023)— the Walz-administration department head during the peak fraud period. The Legislative Auditor faulted “the department” rather than naming Mueller personally, but the commissioner is the politically responsible actor.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson (D. Minn., 2025– ) — the federal prosecutor who held the May 21, 2026 sentencing-day presser. The original 2022 indictment was brought under his predecessor Andrew M. Luger (Biden, 2022–2025).
U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel (Trump first-term, confirmed 2020)— trial and sentencing judge. The May 21, 2026 “vortex of fraud” quote is hers.
Late 2020. MDE staff, alarmed by the pace and volume of new FOF site applications, began denying them. In November 2020, after MDE refused to approve a batch of 143 new sites, Feeding Our Future sued the department in Ramsey County District Court. The case was assigned to Chief Judge John Guthmann. The court did not order MDE to resume payments. It ordered MDE to process applications — a procedural duty MDE already had under state law.
In April 2021, MDE notified the FBI of suspected fraud. That same month, MDE voluntarily resumed approving FOF reimbursements. Between April and July 2021, MDE paid out an additional $17,800,000 in federal pass-through funds while knowing the FBI was investigating. By the end of 2021, total annual MDE pass-through to FOF had reached $197,900,000 and the registered site count had hit 387.
The $17,800,000 paid-after-FBI-notification figure is the single most damning number in the Legislative Auditor’s 120-page report — and the number Walz, when asked publicly, has consistently attributed to a court order that the Ramsey County Judicial Branch has on the record stated did not exist.
“MDE failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the start of the alleged fraud.”
Minnesota Legislative Auditor Judy Randall · MDE Special Review · June 13, 2024
On the night of June 2, 2024 — during the first FOF trial — a young woman knocked on the door of a Spring Lake Park, Minnesota home belonging to a juror identified in court documents as Juror 52. The juror was not home. The juror’s relative opened the door. The visitor handed over a Hallmark gift bag and walked away. Inside the bag: $120,000 in cash, in stacks of $20 and $100 bills, and a note instructing the juror to vote not-guilty in exchange for more money to follow.
The juror reported it to the FBI within hours. The trial judge dismissed her from the jury and sequestered the remaining jurors. Abdimajid Mohamed Nur of Shakopee, Minnesota — a peripheral FOF figure already charged in the main scheme — pleaded guilty to bribery of a juror in July 2024 and admitted recruiting an acquaintance to deliver the bag. Ladan Mohamed Ali and Abdulkarim Shafii Farah were later charged. The first FOF trial resulted in five of the seven defendants being convicted; two were acquitted. The bribe attempt added a 3.5-year federal prison sentence on top of Nur’s existing exposure.
As of the May 2026 sentencing, 79 people had been federally charged in the Feeding Our Future scheme, with 65 convicted — most through guilty plea, nine at trial. By September, roughly 80 had been charged and about 69 convicted. Bock and Said were the only two who took their cases to a full jury trial and were convicted on all counts; subsequent defendants have, as a rule, accepted pleas.
Among those charged: operators of front restaurants, owners of cardboard nonprofits, real-estate brokers who took fraud proceeds, family members of defendants who laundered money through residential property purchases, and at least two attorneys who advised on the financial structure. None of the 79 defendants is an employee of the Minnesota state government. The accountability for the state’s oversight failure has remained, to date, entirely electoral and congressional.
On August 6, 2024 — less than two months after the Legislative Auditor’s damning special review and roughly six weeks after the jury-bribe attempt — then-Vice President Kamala Harris (D) named Walz her running mate. Walz fielded essentially no substantive questions on Feeding Our Future during the national campaign. The case became a Republican line of attack but never an answered one.
On March 4, 2026, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its final report on Minnesota fraud under the Walz-Ellison administration: The Cost of Doing Nothing. The 80-plus-page document projects roughly $300,000,000 in federal child-nutrition fraud and exposure of up to $9,000,000,000 across the broader Minnesota fraud landscape — Medicaid, autism services, the Child Care Assistance Program. Walz and Ellison testified.
“There is no way that a billion dollars-plus got its way out of the Walz administration without someone in the administration being aware and/or complicit.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN-06) · March 2026
President Donald Trump (R) has invoked the Minnesota fraud landscape repeatedly on Truth Social, generally framing it around immigration policy rather than program design. The posts below are reproduced from contemporaneous reporting; we cite them not as endorsement of the framing but as evidence that the case has fully entered the national political conversation.
Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It's OVER!
Reported verbatim by NBC News, Star Tribune, Time, Washington Times. Trump's framing emphasizes immigration; the federal case is about a USDA program failure that any group of fraudsters could have exploited under the post-March-2020 waivers.
Calls Somali immigrants in Minnesota 'scammers' and 'lowlifes,' claiming they account for '90%' of the state's social-services fraud.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrased per NBC News and Common Dreams. The actual share-of-fraud figure is not supported by the Legislative Auditor's report. Cited as evidence of political salience, not as a factual claim.
KARE 11 investigative reporter Kent Erdahl covered the sentencing live, capturing Judge Brasel’s “vortex of fraud” line for broadcast. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota confirmed the same day that 15 additional defendants had been charged in parallel schemes valued at roughly $90,000,000, under the direction of Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson and DOJ Fraud Section AAG Colin McDonald.
The direct cost is the $250,000,000 taken from a federal program designed to feed children during a national emergency. The indirect costs are harder to bound and probably larger. The USDA pandemic waivers — necessary as they were in March 2020 — remained in effect, with adjustments, through 2023. Other states’ nonprofit sponsors operated under the same loosened verification rules. The Minnesota case is unusual in scale but not, by all available evidence, in kind.
The structural takeaway from the Legislative Auditor’s report is not that fraud occurred — fraud is a constant in any large federal program. The takeaway is that the state agency tasked with verification had warning signs in writing in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and chose, repeatedly, not to act on them. By the time the FBI raids came in January 2022, more than $200,000,000 had moved out the door. None of it was recovered. The $243,000,000 restitution order against Bock is, in practical terms, symbolic.
The political accountability has come in waves: the Legislative Auditor’s report (nonpartisan, 2024); the House Oversight Committee’s Cost of Doing Nothing report (Republican-majority, 2026); a continuing string of federal sentencings that will run for years. The administrative accountability — what changed inside MDE, what changed inside the AG’s office, what changed about how USDA writes pandemic-emergency waivers — is what readers should watch next. The fraud cleared. The system that allowed it has not yet visibly changed.
