Feeding Our Fraud: To the jury

Attorneys in the Feeding Our Future trial of Aimee Bock and Salim Said made their closing arguments to the jury yesterday. This is the second trial of defendants charged in the massive $250 million fraud, the biggest Covid fraud discovered in the United States. Of the 70 defendants indicted, 37 have pleaded guilty. Trials of other defendants are scheduled through the rest of this year.

This trial is of particular interest because Aimee Bock was the executive director of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit that sponsored the admitted liars and cheats who operated the “sites” participating in the federal child nutrition program they defrauded. Salim Said ran the Safari restaurant at which the business model of the fraud seems to have been pioneered starting in April 2020.

In its totality, the fraud committed in these cases is gross, disgusting, despicable. What did the lawyers have to say? Their arguments ran over four hours. Here are highlights.

Assistant United States Attorney Harry Jacobs for the government (full disclosure: Harry is married to my cousin Robin Applebaum):

The government has charged these defendants with wire fraud, federal programs bribery, money laundering, and related conspiracy counts. Jacobs recalled the evidence underlying the charges in themes that pervaded the government’s case.

Aimee Bock was Feeding Our Future. She ran the nonprofit and exploited the program at issue in this case. That program was intended to provide reimbursement to providers of free meals to kids. Bock used it to build an empire founded on fraud. Feeding Our Future was to supervise the sites it sponsored to provide the meals. The sites were not to constitute a moneymaking endeavor. The program was to provide meals, not make millionaires.

Bock herself admits the program she ran was riddled with fraud and that she employed perpetrators who took advantage of it. Bock disclaims knowledge and responsibility for the wrongdoing, but the government has put innumerable “meal count” forms into evidence, every one of which Bock herself certified.

Said ran Safari restaurant and participated in the Safari Group of sites that appeared to operate as franchises of the restaurant model that Said established. Said collected fake paperwork and fake meal count claims to submit to Bock. The 299 sites that Feeding Our Future ultimately sponsored all fit the pattern of fakery and fraud.

At Safari Said claimed to serve 5,000 and then 6,000 kids free meals twice a day, every day, seven days a week, month after month, with minute variations in attendance — “fake claims, real money.” Said kept the wheels greased with kickbacks to high-level Feeding Our Future employees. Safari was rewarded with monthly million-dollar checks based on the fake meal counts. Safari owners split the proceeds and lived the good life. Food costs were minimal.

When for-profit restaurants were barred from the program in late 2020, Feeding Our Future issued a “clarification” to the Minnesota Department of Education, which was responsible for its administration. Feeding Our Future falsely assured MDE that its own staff served the meals at Safari and the related sites that proliferated and then operated in like fashion. There were no armies of Feeding Our Future staff or volunteers doling out food.

With respect to one set of fake meal counts at a fake site allegedly located at SIR Boxing in St. Paul, SIR Boxing owner Cerresso Fort testified that he knew nothing about his business’s alleged status as a Feeding Our Future site and that “math ain’t mathin’” in the meal counts submitted for the site.

Fakery pervaded the program. Feeding Our Future itself had a fake board of directors. Three of them testified at trial — two bartenders and a mechanic for the City of Eagan. They knew nothing about their alleged status as board members. They testified that they lacked any qualifications to serve on a nonprofit board. They never attended a board meeting. They knew nothing about Feeding Our Future until it hit the headlines.

Feeding Our Future collected fake rosters to support the fake meal counts. The names on the roster were fake — “Putify Nop” perhaps most prominent among them. “Cerresso Fort” was also included. His name is real, but he was never a beneficiary of the free meal program. The sites used programs to generate fake names and ages to generate the rosters. “You don’t need to generate fake names if you’re feeding real kids,” Jacobs said.

Safari’s meal costs were minimal. It spent some 4 percent on food. “That’s not how a reimbursement program works,” Jacobs commented. The federally funded meal program of the St. Paul Public Schools barely breaks even.

The FBI set up a surveillance pole camera outside Safari in December 2021. It found empty streets and no kids. It depicted a few cars picked up meals — nothing to support the 5.000 meals a day Safari was allegedly serving or the 3.1 million it allegedly served in total from April 2020 until the program was shut down in January 2022.

MDE raised concerns about Feeding Our Future in October 2020. In the next few months it held up some payments and stopped approving the site applications with which it was inundated by Feeding Our Future. Bock rallied the troops to protest at MDE and retained an attorney who made fake claims of racism to silence and intimidate MDE.

Jacobs cited the testimony of the cooperating defendants who have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify in hope of a lighter sentence from Judge Brasel: Shamarke Jama, Lul Ali, Qamar Hassan, Mohamed Hussein, and Hanna Markegn. They all operated sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future that ran on the model pioneered by Safari.

In total the sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future claimed to serve 91 million meals for which they were reimbursed nearly $250 million. The money was used for everything but meals. It was used to enrich the players.

Jacobs summed up the government’s case: “No one was supposed to get rich. Kids were supposed to get fed. The opposite happened.”

Ken Udoibok for Aimee Bock:

Udoibok pointed the finger of blame outward to Bock’s employees, to the bad actors at some of the sites Feeding Our Future sponsored, and to the Minnesota Department of Education. MDE disclaimed authority to investigate fraud. If MDE lacked the authority, what was Bock supposed to do? Moreover, MDE itself approved all the sites that Feeding Our Future sponsored. Bock did not create the sites.

When the FBI raided Feeding Our Future in one of the raids conducted in the case throughout the Twin Cities on January 20, 2022, it found files that filled 270 boxes of well-organized documents, among which were the documents that supported the meal claims. Udoibok asked, “If you want to commit fraud, that’s how you do it?”

Employees and site operators lied to Bock. They betrayed her trust. Bock relied on her staff. They developed systems to fool her.

By contrast, the FBI served 1200 subpoenas, executed 27 search warrants, and set up 12 surveillance cameras. They had the investigative resources that Bock lacked. She did the best she could. Where was MDE?

The FBI’s search of Bock’s home turned up no great luxuries or cash ($13,000) — nothing like the millions she paid out to the sites under her sponsorship.

MDE approved everything. MDE had open access to the documents on file at Feeding Our Future.

When then FBI raided Bock’s home, she told the agents that she wanted to help them root out any fraud in the program. I’m not sure the echo of O.J. Simpson wanting to look for Nicole’s killer aids Bock’s case.

Adrian Montez for Salim Said:

Montez acknowledged the government has shown evidence of blatant fraud. It has introduced the testimony of admitted fraudsters who never even had the kitchen capacity to serve the meals claimed. But that is not the case with Safari. The government has transposed a false narrative from the fraudulent sites onto Safari.

Safari could simultaneously accommodate diners in its restaurant, 200-300 customers in its event space, cater events, and serve up food for takeout. Its kitchen crew was accustomed to “prepping massive amounts of food for massive amounts of people.” On some days before Covid it served 1,000 meals a day.

The transition to the federal child nutrition program during Covid was easy for Safari. They were ready to go on day one. “Meals were going out of the restaurant by the dozen,” he said.

Salim Said ran Safari. He was on the scene. In his case, he introduced photographic and video evidence of the assembly line food packaging that made the program work at Safari. Jurors should discount the sleepy time depicted in the FBI’s surveillance videos. “Food was going out four doors” at Safari, he said. (I only remember two.)

“Salim Said was serving thousands of meals a day at Safari,” according to Montez. Other sites that are characterized as among “the Safari Group” took Said’s honest model and corrupted it. Indeed, his business partner (who has separately pleaded guilty) corrupted Said’s business model. Said only “invested” start-up funds in those sites and received his share of the profits from them. The “investment” constituted his only connection to those sites.

Assistant United States Attorney Matt Ebert for the government on rebuttal:

With the burden of proof on the government to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the government gets the last word before the jury is instructed. Matt Ebert spoke on behalf of the government in rebuttal.

Lies about feeding children were defendants’ most precious commodity. The defendants’ conduct was cynical, brazen, and criminal. They told lies to get rich. The knew what they were doing. The evidence of their guilty is overwhelming.

With a real board of directors, Bock could never have gotten away with her fraud and her self-dealing. Every transaction screamed out “fraud.” The ludicrous meal counts and fake rosters make for devastating evidence of fraud.

Said got rich on the child nutrition program — $5.5 million in a matter of 18 months. All together, Feeding Our Future paid the Safari sites more than $31 million. Said’s alleged “investment” was to make a killing. He characterized the surveillance video of Safari as capturing a “ghost town.”

Safari had to be buying food for 10,000 meals a day. This case is about what actually happened. There is no video of cars or human beings receiving food in anything like those numbers. The evidence shows minimal food expenses. Once Safari became a Feeding Our Future site, the banks continually shut down its accounts because of concerns about fraud and money laundering. Up until Covid, it had no such problem.

Remember the 1.8 miracle mile stretch of Lake Street. Safari was at its heart. The miracle mile was ultimately populated by 21 Feeding Our Future sites that reaped $34.3 million in proceeds. The claims are a mathematical impossibility. Said claimed he drew customers from Little Mogadishu in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, but there is no evidence of that. It is patently false.

Aimee Bock testified using the same tactics of deception that she used with MDE. She admitted the fraud all around her. She claims she was somehow in the dark. The only issue is whether she knew of it. Bock was up to her eyeballs in the fraud every day. Now she attributes blame to everyone but herself. However, Bock submitted, certified, and signed every site’s fraudulent meal count claims. She also signed the eye-popping checks based on the claims.

Feeding Our Future sponsored two sites in a flyblown south Minneapolis building at 2854 Columbus Avenue. One of the two sites was operated by Feeding Our Future itself. FBI surveillance video essentially captured no activity at the building other than its treatment as a crime scene one day. When MDE inquired about the propriety of two sites for at the one building, Bock herself assured MDE: “We have verified it is different youth being served at each of the locations in the building.” Use your common sense — Bock’s testimony is full of lies.

Said was Bock’s co-conspirator in the fraud. Her text message to Said says it all: “blackie [Said’s nickname] has shit to take me down.” Guilty people talk like that.

This fraud went viral — it rocked the state of Minnesota. It is the largest Covid fraud in the United States. Bock and Said are the two main authors of the long con. The largest law enforcement operation in the history of the state froze it. Now the government is powerless to end this story. Only you (the jury) have the power to bring this story to its conclusion.