Amid Feeding Our Future convictions, another nonprofit seeks reinstatement to food program

A Twin Cities nonprofit investigated alongside Feeding Our Future is fighting to resume its participation in a taxpayer-funded food program. On the same day that a jury convicted Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock in the major meal fraud scheme, an attorney for Partners in Quality Care was in another courthouse asking a panel of judges to reinstate the group.

Of the 70 people charged in the Feeding Our Future case, none worked directly for Partners in Quality Care, which is also known as Partners in Nutrition. But federal investigators say in court filings that PIQC operated in a similarly fraudulent way.

No one from PIQC has been indicted. But details of its activities are included in documents from multiple civil and criminal cases.

Like Feeding Our Future, PIQC allegedly sponsored phony meal distribution sites during COVID, then submitted tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent reimbursement claims to the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

When the FBI investigation into Feeding Our Future became public in early 2022, the Minnesota Department of Education, or MDE, cut off the cash flowing to both nonprofits. Feeding Our Future dissolved after the flurry of federal indictments, but PIQC continues to battle regulators.

Before a three-judge Minnesota Court of Appeals panel on March 19, attorney Emily Asp argued that MDE acted illegally when it classified PIQC as “seriously deficient,” terminated it from the food program, and disqualified eight of its leaders from further participation.

“MDE prejudged PIQC and the individuals for the fraudulent conduct of others, then exercised its will not on substantive evidence, but rather on untrue facts, unstated assumptions, and matters outside of the administrative record,” Asp said.

Federal prosecutors said in court documents that PIQC grew dramatically because of fraud. In 2019 the nonprofit received and distributed around $5.6 million in food program funds. By 2021, its revenue skyrocketed to $179 million after it submitted claims for more than 80 million meals.

A number of the defendants convicted of operating fake meal sites under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship also ran PIQC sites.

At the first Feeding Our Future trial in 2024, jurors convicted five people connected to a small Shakopee restaurant of stealing $47 million from the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program. Federal prosecutors said that around $40 million of that amount flowed through PIQC, and that figure is not included in the $250 million allegedly stolen by the 300 meal sites that Feeding Our Future sponsored.

Anab Awad, who was among the first defendants in the case to plead guilty, admitted operating five PIQC sites, and submitting $11.2 million in false claims.

“Why wouldn’t just that amount of money standing alone be enough to sustain a determination of serious deficiency sufficient to cancel this contract?” Appellate Judge Louise Dovre Bjorkman asked Asp, the attorney for PIQC.

Asp did not dispute that meal sites her client sponsored made claims for food that wasn’t served. But she said the state never gave PIQC specific information about how to repay the funds. She said that the nonprofit couldn’t refund the money anyway because MDE blocked PIQC’s access to the state’s reimbursement system.

Federal prosecutors say they’ve recovered about $60 million since the child nutrition program fraud investigation began. A portion of that amount is from meal distribution sites sponsored by PIQC.

In a response to emailed questions from MPR News late Thursday, Asp added that PIQC “would welcome the opportunity to perform an accounting with MDE to determine which past Food Program payments belong to whom.”

At the appellate hearing, Assistant Minnesota Attorney General Joe Weiner, who represents MDE, argued that the department was well within its authority to halt the payments. He said PIQC meal sites claimed to have served more than two thirds of the state’s 850,000 children — a figure that the nonprofit’s managers should have known was fraudulent.

Using a shoplifting analogy, Weiner also noted that PIQC collected part of every claim as administrative fees.

“You’ve got people who are walking out of the store, coats bulging with things. And they say ‘But I’ve got a receipt, here’s a receipt.’ And they say, ‘Well you’ve got a receipt,’ don’t even bother to check it, and just let them go. And then on top of it the security guard gets 15 percent of the value of those goods,” Weiner said.

The three-judge panel is expected to rule on PIQC’s appeal sometime in the next three months. Federal prosecutors have not said specifically whether they plan to charge the nonprofit’s leadership team.

But following last week’s convictions of Bock and restaurant owner Salim Said, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said that the meal program fraud investigation remains active.

In her email, Asp said from PIQC’s inception in 2015 to the start of the pandemic, the nonprofit was a successful meal site sponsor “and there were no accusations of fraud.”

“The people that are principally responsible for the fraud are the criminals who submitted fraudulent claims to PIQC,” Asp added, noting that prevailing at the Minnesota Court of Appeals “would not automatically reinstate PIQC into the Child and Adult Care Food Program.”

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