Feeding Our Fraud: Aimee Bock takes the stand

Judge Brasel held a pretrial hearing in another serious multiparty criminal case from 9:00 until about 10:45 yesterday. The case allegedly involves members of Minneapolis’s Highs gang. It’s charged as a RICO case. Earlier this week Judge Brasel sentenced one of the co-defendants in the case — Deandre Poe, a.k.a. “Squizzy” or “Fat Squad” — to 168 months in prison.

On his way out of court after the hearing one defense attorney John Conard asked if I was Scott Johnson of Power Line and talked up the site. He told me he was a friend of Theresa Bevilacqua, the outstanding attorney who represented me in my section 1983 First Amendment case against the Walz administration. John made my day early, but he found no takers among his fellow defense attorneys. That much I can tell you.

When the Feeding Our Future trial resumed FBI forensic accountant Sonya Jansma picked up her testimony where she had left off Thursday afternoon. She continued to trace the flow of money from Feeding Our Future to defendants Salim Said and the uses to which he put the money. Ms. Jansma traced the funds that Said used to buy his home and commercial properties including the venerable 2722 Park Avenue mansion in Minneapolis. Feeding Our Future’s office was housed in the mansion at the end. The funds derived from the Safari restaurant and other “sites” operated by Said with his business partners to defraud the federal child nutrition program administered by the Minnesota Department of Education. Said and his partners also used federal funds derived from the nutrition program to purchase a commercial property in Columbus, Ohio.

Lead prosecutor Thompson then turned to Bock’s personal use of similarly sourced funds for personal purposes by Bock herself and by her “live-in boyfriend.” Thompson must have incorporated the “live-in boyfriend” phrase 25 times into his questions — a live-in boyfriend named Empress Watson. His name reminded me of the humorous Shel Silverstein song that Johnny Cash turned into a hit with the live version he performed for the inmates of San Quentin in 1969.

“A boy named Empress” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “a boy named Sue,” but it might have appeared in an early draft of the song. A boy named “Empress”? No. A boy named “Princess”? Not quite. A boy named “Queen”? Getting closer. A boy named “Sue”? That’s it!

Bock’s live-in boyfriend set up what appears to have been a shell company — Handy Helpers — that Bock used to share the wealth with Watson. Bock funneled more than $1,000,000 of program funds to Handy Helpers and to Watson. Bock wrote a series of $10,000 checks and transfers to Handy Helpers that Watson used for personal purposes. Ms. Jansma reviewed the source and use of the Feeding Our Future funds by Watson and Bock in testimony that continued well into the afternoon. Most of the more than $1,000,000 that Bock funneled to Watson went through Handy Helpers.

Among the personal uses to which the funds were put: jewelry purchased at Wedding Day Diamonds, travel expenses for two trips to Las Vegas with high-end car rentals (Lamborghini and Mercedes), and purchases of Louis Vuitton accoutrements in Vegas. Back at home Watson bought vehicles including a Mercedes GLE and a Porsche. Bock later took title to the Porsche. Both of these vehicles were seized by the FBI on January 20, 2022, the day the investigation of Feeding Our Future “went overt” with raids all over the Twin Cities.

Over lunch Judge Brasel took a guilty plea from Feeding Our Future co-defendant Abdinasir Mahamed Abshir. Abshir is the thirty-seventh defendant to plead guilty in this sprawling case. The related press release is posted here.

We last heard from Abshir at the detention hearing before our former law firm colleague Magistrate Judge Tony Leung last week. Like other defendants awaiting trial, Abshir was at liberty on conditional release. In the hall outside Judge Brasel’s courtroom Abshir tampered with a cooperating defendant who was waiting to testify in this trial. Prosecutors moved to revoke his release and have him held pending trial and Judge Leung granted the motion.

The press release on Abshir’s guilty plea recites Abshir’s exploitation of federal nutrition program for more than $5.4 million in payments from Feeding Our Future on fraudulent claims. Abshir’s plea also includes an admission regarding the witness tampering incident:

[I]n the hallway outside Courtroom 13W in the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Abshir approached a witness who was about to testify in the trial. After learning that the witness was about to testify that day, Abshir requested that the witness come with him to the bathroom to have a conversation….In his plea, [Abshir] acknowledges that an enhancement will apply to his Sentencing Guidelines because he obstructed justice when he attempted to tamper with a witness.

Abshir attorney Craig Cascarano pitched Judge Brasel to relent on Abshir’s detention before sentencing. Judge Brasel ruled that continued detention was warranted. Since I wrote here about the hearing on this issue last week, Judge Leung has filed a formal written detention order dated March 5. Consistent with his oral ruling last week, Judge Leung commented:

Like the jury tampering that has been alleged to have occurred in the only other Feeding Our Future case tried thus far, intimidation of a witness is also a direct attack on the integrity, efficacy, and reliability of this nation’s judicial system. The disregard for norms of laws and rules is all the more brazen in the context of the heightened scrutiny after the jury tampering charges stemming from the previously tried case.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were amended, in part, to address the concerns for jury tampering and witness intimidation in the so-called New York mafia trials that seemed from a distant place and a vestige of a long by-gone era. The allegations of jury tampering and witness intimidation in the Feeding Our Future cases, however, affirm that the concerns giving rise to the amended criminal procedures remain real here today.

Based on Defendant’s alleged attempt to tamper with and intimidate a cooperating defendant witness; Defendant’s new criminal charges; Defendant’s misrepresentation of his residence to his pretrial release supervisor; Defendant’s demonstrated unlikelihood of abiding by any condition or combination of conditions of release that this Court could fashion; and the record before the Court, no condition or combination of conditions would reasonably address the issue of public safety or the reappearance of Defendant. See 18 U.S.C. § 3148(b)(2)(A) and (B).

Judge Brasel expressed her agreement with Judge Leung’s ruling.

Ms. Jansma concluded her testimony following lunch. When the government rested its case, defendants moved for a judgment of acquittal. Judge Brasel more or less invited Thompson not to respond. Thompson simply opposed the motions based on the evidence submitted in the government’s case. Judge Brasel denied the motions. She held that “the evidence is sufficient to sustain verdicts on all [28] counts.” Bock is charged in seven counts, Said in twenty-one.

When Ken Udoibok indicated that Bock would testify as a witness on her own behalf, Judge Brasel informed her of her right not to testify. Bock responded that she understood, that she waived her right, and that she wanted to testify. She took the stand and testified for about an hour before court adjourned for the day. Her testimony so far hasn’t gotten into the meat of the case.

Udoibok began with Bock’s personal and educational background. She is 44 years old. She is from Cottage Grove, Minnesota. She took an undergraduate degree in elementary education at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She currently lives with her parents. She has one son at home with her and one in college.

Immediately before founding Feeding Our Future Bock worked for Partners In Nutrition, a predecessor nonprofit that sponsored of child nutrition sites. She must have learned the business there. Bock vaguely stated that she left Partners In Nutrition after two or three years because of differences with it, but there is a story there. Perhaps we will get to it later.

Bock established Feeding Our Future in 2016. It received 501(c)(3) status from the IRS in early 2017. She described the intended work of Feeding Our Future as a sponsor of federal child nutrition programs administered by the Minnesota Department of Education. At its peak it employed approximately 100 staff members.

Bock reviewed a Feeding Our Future organization chart that was topped by the founding board of directors including Ben Stayberg (president), John Senkler (board secretary), and Jamie Phelps (treasurer). Her cursory testimony on their qualifications did not exactly square with the highly credible stories each of them told during the government’s case. They were all surprised to find that themselves members of the board and assigned tasks for which they had no qualifications.

Bock also reviewed the management staff set out on the organization chart. We have heard a lot about Abdikerm Eidleh in the government’s case. His formal position, according to Bock, was Program Support Manager and, she added parenthetically, he is a “horrible person.” Charged in the case, he is on the lam in Somalia. According to Bock, as I understood her testimony, Eidleh was in charge of hiring and supervising site staff.

Bock herself was the executive director. Her role, she said, was reviewing United States Department of Agriculture regulations and handbooks as well as related Minnesota Department of Education documents. She visited sites once in a while, but it was not a duty of her position. She served as a point of contact with MDE and oversaw management staff, making sure they understood program requirements. Her testimony placed her at some remove from the operation of the sites and meal count claims on which Feeding Our Future subsisted.

I sit next to Star Tribune reporter Jeff Meitrodt in court. I have enjoyed discussing the case with him. As Bock and Udoibok left the courtroom at the end of the day, Jeff asked Bock why she had decided to testify. He didn’t get an answer. “Let’s go,” Udoibok said to Bock. Meitrodt’s current story on developments yesterday is posted here.

I think Bock is testifying because she would be convicted with a certainty of 100 percent absent another side of the story. What has she got to lose?

Meitrodt talked to Aimee Bock at length after she was indicted in September 2022. He co-wrote the background story “For Feeding Our Future leader, an unlikely path to scandal.” Over a long career he has covered public corruption cases in Chicago and New Orleans. He has emphatically told me several times that Bock is the most persuasive salesman he has ever seen. Joe Thompson looks forward to cross-examining her. She is the source and origin of this massive fraud.

Minnesota Public Radio reporter Matt Sepic’s current trial story is posted here. Sepic’s story includes the video below depicting the growth in the number of of “sites” sponsored by Feeding Our Future and meal claims processed for payment in 2020 and 2021. It has been received as demonstrative evidence, meaning it was for the jurors to view but will not go into the jury room with them when they retire to deliberate.

Judge Brasel had warned us a few weeks ago that she is otherwise committed on Monday and Tuesday next week. Trial resumes on Wednesday morning with Bock’s continued direct examination.