Feeding Our Future leader promised ‘American Dream,’ cooperating defendant testifies
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Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis could rest their case as soon as Tuesday in the trial of Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and Salim Said, a co-owner of a Minneapolis restaurant that allegedly played a leading role in what investigators say was a $250 million scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs during the pandemic.
This week, a cooperating defendant described to jurors how Bock directed his wife to fill out fraudulent meal count sheets. Bock then allegedly submitted these for reimbursement to the Minnesota Department of Education, which distributes federal funding for the programs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Mohamed Ali Hussein said that in 2009 he started a nonprofit called Somali American Faribault Education, or SAFE, to help high school students with math and science. In 2023 Hussein, 55, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy for using the nonprofit to steal millions of dollars from government food programs. His wife, Lul Bashir Ali, 59, also pleaded guilty to the same charge and admitted using Lido, her small Faribault restaurant, to siphon taxpayer cash.
Altogether the couple stole more than $5 million and could each face around 4 years in prison under the terms of their plea agreements. Ali testified for the government earlier in the trial.
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Hussein recounted how Feeding Our Future employee Abdikerm Eidleh would come to Ali’s restaurant to pick up $30,000 in cash kickbacks every month. Echoing his wife’s testimony, Hussein said that during each of these visits, Eidleh would contact Bock via FaceTime.
Hussein testified Thursday that during one of these video calls, Bock told Ali “When you’re doing meal counts, write down that you provide 1,000 meals for kids every day. If you do 1,000 meals every day, you’re going to get more money, you’re going to get a big check, big benefit. [Bock] was saying American Dream, American Dream,” Hussein said.
In reality, the restaurant typically served a few dozen customers each day and had nowhere near the capacity to prepare 1,000 meals. Hussein said that after state regulators stopped allowing restaurants to participate in the food program, he set up his nonprofit as a phony vendor for Ali’s business.
“I feel she ruined my life. She destroyed me and my family,” Hussein replied when Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Bobier asked how he felt about the time he spent working with Bock.
Eidleh, 41, is also charged in the case, but prosecutors say he fled to Somalia in late 2021, several months before the FBI’s investigation became public.
Defense attorney Ken Udoibok has argued throughout the trial that meal site operators and other Feeding Our Future employees deceived Bock, and she had no knowledge of any fraud.
Udoibok pressed Hussein on the kickbacks that he admitted giving Eidleh.
“How do you know he gave Bock $30,000?” Udoibok asked.
“He wouldn’t call her if he takes the money on his own,” Hussein replied.
Udoibok also asked Hussein if Bock ever called him directly or if he called her. “Not ever,” Hussein said.
Jurors also heard testimony from two witnesses who appeared bewildered to see their names on documents found during the investigation.
On Wednesday, Jamie Phelps testified that Bock, who was a casual acquaintance, asked him in 2018 to be on Feeding Our Future’s board. Phelps, a mechanic from St. Paul – said he wanted to be helpful and agreed, but didn’t know what being a board member entailed.
Phelps testified that he forgot about the nonprofit until his name showed up in a newspaper article several years later. Bobier asked Phelps for his reaction to seeing his name on falsified board meeting minutes.
“My name is on a sheet that I’ve never seen before, and I’m in front of a federal court. It’s an odd feeling,” Phelps replied.
Earlier Wednesday, St. Paul boxing gym owner Cerresso Fort testified that he had no clue that Feeding Our Future had listed his business as a meal distribution site that had purported to serve 2,500 meals per day to children.
When prosecutor Matt Ebert showed Fort a meal claim form that Bock allegedly signed and submitted, Fort said it didn’t make sense.
“That math ain’t mathing,” Fort quipped.
Fort added that he felt misled, and feeding kids is something he’d like to be able to do at his gym because he likes to help the community and there’s a genuine need for free meals.
IRS investigator Joshua Parks, who testified at the first Feeding Our Future trial about fake names that appeared on meal site attendance sheets, returned to the witness stand Wednesday afternoon.
Parks said that made-up names such as “Putify Nop” and “Amen Love” appeared again and again on rosters that were included with reimbursement requests from multiple meal sites. Parks noted that the lists also included genuine names, but some of these belonged to elderly residents of a high-rise apartment building in St. Paul.
Parks testified that only about three percent of the names that appeared on attendance rosters for St. Paul meal sites overlapped with enrollment records from the St. Paul Public Schools. And he said that an Excel spreadsheet used to create the rosters included a function to randomly generate children’s ages.
“This is intentional. You have to put this in,” Parks said. “The names are fake. The ages are fake. The rosters are fake.”
The investigator noted that the ages of some children fluctuated from month to month. A child with the name “Aish Hashim” was listed as being 11 years old on a meal count sheet submitted for October 2021. By December, the child was 10.
Under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Ebert, Parks testified that Fort, the boxing gym owner who testified earlier that same day, appeared on the roster of people who received food at a meal distribution site in Mankato. Fort, a 38-year-old man, was listed on the form as a 7-year-old child.
During the first Feeding Our Future trial in 2024, prosecutors showed extensive evidence of the defendants’ lavish spending on travel, high-end vehicles, and luxury homes. Such evidence has not been a major focus of the ongoing trial. But on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Jacobs showed photos from the January 2022 search of Bock’s home in Rosemount.
The exhibit included images of an $1,120 Burberry winter coat, a newly purchased Mercedes Benz SUV, and a large stack of cash that an FBI agent recovered from a bedside table and photographed alongside a Gucci handbag.