Feeding Our Fraud: Cherchez la femme

When trial resumed yesterday after a four-day weekend break, Aimee Bock continued her testimony on direct examination under the questioning of defense attorney Ken Udoibok. Bock testified to the Feeding Our Future management structure, to her responsibilities as executive director of the organization, and to the claims process. She methodically presented the whole thing as a sort of well-oiled machine.

Bock’s taking the stand should be the most dramatic moment in the trial and in a sense it is. As Udoibok has led her through her direct examination, however, it seemed to me by turns anti-climactic, boring, and maybe laughable. Late in the afternoon Bock shed a tear or two about her current financial straits and sought to render herself pitiable. She testified that she lacks the funds even to open a bank account. It is difficult to tell, but I thought the impact on the jury was negligible.

Udoibok sought unsuccessfully to introduce a series of documents that Bock had prepared to summarize aspects of the business and related issues. Judge Brasel sustained the government’s objection to each of these documents and called a timeout outside the hearing of the jury. Prosecutor Joe Thompson complained that Udoibok was unfairly making the government appear to be keeping evidence from the jury. Judge Brasel did not quite admonish Udoibok to stop it, but she has ruled that the documents are inadmissible hearsay and got Ukdoibok to stop it.

I don’t think Judge Brasel’s sustaining the government’s objections to the documents as hearsay makes the government look bad so much as it makes Udoibok look inept. You don’t really want the jury to think that the judge is on your case. They know they she knows the all the evidence they won’t see. The defense doesn’t want her disapproval to be manifest and Udoibok has made her manifest it in her rapid-fire rulings sustaining the government’s hearsay objections.

One indisputable fact remains. Bock was the head of an organization that doled out some $250 million in taxpayer funds for the federal child nutrition programs to fraudsters operating as “sites” or “vendors” of the sites. Thirty-seven of the “site” operators and vendors to which Feeding Our Future administered funds have pleaded guilty. Some of them have testified against Bock in this case. Bock denied in her testimony yesterday that she took kickbacks from them, contrary to the testimony of one cooperating defendant earlier in this trial. Bock testified that she discovered that vendor’s attempted fraud and banned it from the program.

In the morning Bock testified at length about the process of obtaining a site identification to get the unique number that allows processing in the software system. The site identification is the predicate of application to the Minnesota Department of Education for approval of the site to participate in the program. This distinction was covered several times in the government’s case and has now been beaten to death. It is apparently important to Bock because Udoibok implies that MDE’s “approval” of given “sites” tends to support Bock’s defense that whatever happened here, it wasn’t her fault.

During the Covid regime Feeding Our Future grew rapidly with “multiple eyes” on each of the nearly 300 “sites” that Feeding Our Future sponsored. Bock purportedly managed this growth. She trained staff in “Managing Growth Over 35 Percent” — a document she disseminated internally and to MDE, but one of those which Judge Brasel excluded from evidence. “There was a lot happening,” Bock testified.

Bock discussed the attendance waivers promulgated in April 2020 as a result of Covid. “Sites” no longer needed to keep attendance rosters for meals that were picked up or delivered for consumption away from the “site.” Bock nevertheless kept accumulating attendance rosters against the day when the waiver would become inoperative.

Bock also testified to the miracle 1.8 mile stretch of Lake Street that ultimately included 21 “sites” that Feeding Our Future sponsored. Bock asserted that the need was great along this stretch because it was located adjacent to a “food desert” resulting from the torching of the Target, Cub, and Aldi stores during the George Floyd riots just before Covid. I thought this was a gag–me-with-a-spoon moment. It should destroy Bock’s credibility.

Bock portrayed herself as actively involved in the investigation of possible fraud among “sites” and “vendors.” I’m going to go out on a limb and say she didn’t do a very good job of it — not even among her own employees.

Udoibok led Bock through other issues raised in the government’s case — her investigation of suspect claims, her termination of “sites” and “vendors” from the program for a variety of reasons including fraud, and prepayments to preferred sites (Bock said they were authorized under applicable regulations), and each of the site id. applications or site applications underlying the government’s wire fraud claims. It seems to me that Bock’s investigation of suspect claims should have had a far broader reach. Those suspect claims look an awful lot like many others the government has introduced into evidence against her. Feeding Our Future also profited from those claims when it took the sponsor’s cut of the USDA’s reimbursement payments.

Bock testified to her frustrations with the Minnesota Department of Education. It failed to provide guidance she sought. She also threatened and ultimately brought a lawsuit against MDE in state court for failing to process the site applications with which Feeding Our Future inundated MDE in late 2020 and early 2021.

During its case the government introduced evidence of Bock’s lawyer (Rhyddid Watkins) repeatedly playing the race card in his correspondence with MDE. Udoibok had Bock deny that she had ever alleged racism against MDE. However, her lawyer did, she was copied on her lawyer’s correspondence, and her lawyer is her agent. She alleged racism against MDE through her lawyer.

I wonder how Joe Thompson will cross-examine her on this issue. Judge Brasel will not let Udoibok relitigate the 2021 case Feeding Our Future brought against MDE. However, Udoibok has now sought to distance Bock from the claims of racism alleged by her lawyer in that case. They certainly had the effect of inducing compliance with Bock’s wishes.

Judge Brasel excluded the order entered by Judge Guthmann in April 2021 from evidence in this case. She will not allow that case to be relitigated in this case. It was that month, however, that MDE administrator Emily Honer communicated her concerns regarding the Feeding Our Future fraud to the FBI and triggered the investigation ultimarely leading to this case.

Bock also reviewed the government’s evidence that she profited from the fraud. She set up School Age Consultants just before the fall. The cash seized in her home derived from cash payments for the training program she conducted under the auspices of the nonprofit. She wrote policy and procedure manual in a 4-inch binder that was available for $2800 at the training program. For some reason, however, Udoibok has not sought to introduce the manual itself into evidence. Maybe it has been the subject of a pretrial ruling. I thought one of the photographic exhibits displayed yesterday depicted it.

Bock was led through testimony on the jewelry that Empress Watson had purchased for her with funds emanating from Feeding Our Future. Bock discovered that Watson was two-timing her with another woman. Some of the jewelry he purchased went to the other woman. Some clothing she received as a gift from Watson was sized to fit the other woman, not her. The funds that Watson derived from Feeding Our Future through Handy Helpers were for construction work that refashioned Feeding Our Future’s office.

Judge Brasel abruptly adjourned court at 4:45 for the “prayer time” observed by Bock’s co-defendant. Both Bock and her co-defendant are praying for a verdict of acquittal. Bock has yet to conclude her testimony on direct, but her cross-examination by Joe Thompson should commence later this morning.