Photo Credit | Cedric Hohnstadt
Aimee Bock, the mastermind behind a $250 million child nutrition fraud scheme in Minnesota, has been sentenced to 500 months in prison, or 41.5 years. She’s also been ordered to pay more than $240 million in restitution.
Bock was the executive director of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money to several existing and bogus nonprofits while falsely reporting the number of meals served to children and adults.
Federal prosecutors had been asking for a 50-year sentence in the case, and Bock, under sentencing guidelines, could have gotten 100 years in prison.
A jury found Bock guilty last year of seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, and federal programs bribery.
The Scam
Feeding Our Future utilized two federal programs designed to help feed children and adults in daycare and after-school programs: the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program. The organization served as the gatekeeper between the two programs and hundreds of nonprofits.
The nonprofits would submit meal counts to Feeding Our Future, which would then seek reimbursement from the federal government. However, some organizations padded the number of meals they said they were serving, and some didn’t serve any meals at all.
The Justice Department has charged nearly 80 people connected to the fraud scheme.
What Did Minnesota Political Leaders Know?
The complete scope and details of the involvement of Minnesota elected leaders in the fraud scheme are still unknown. As the Daily Signal reported in February, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been accused of helping leaders behind the scheme and profiting politically from the organization. He has said he did not help the leaders of the organization and did not profit from them.
Sen. Josh Hawley claimed in a hearing on Minnesota fraud that Feeding Our Future leaders met with Ellison at the end of 2021 and asked the attorney general for “help in getting investigators off their backs.”
“They complained to you for upwards of an hour about state investigators going after them, and they begged you to help them, and you agreed to it, amazingly, and we know you did because it’s all caught on tape,” Hawley said.
Hawley also accused Ellison of taking $10,000 from Feeding Our Future, referring to reports that Ellison received $10,000 in contributions from members of the organization.
Ellison called Hawley’s accusations “a lie.”
At that same hearing, Gov. Tim Walz was tongue-tied trying to explain why payments resumed to Feeding Our Future after the state’s Education Department stopped payments in 2021 over the alleged fraud.
Walz had claimed a court determined the Education Department didn’t have the authority to stop payments. However, as Rep. Jim Jordan noted, the state court released a blunt statement declaring Walz’s statement was “false,” and that the agency “voluntarily resumed payments.”
“So, the court is lying or you’re lying?”
“I can’t tell you, congressman,” Walz said. “I just simply know what the attorneys at the department believe, which is that it was a misinterpretation.”
Though one can question her credibility and motives for speaking out, Bock herself told Fox News in February, “Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison were fully aware of the $250 million child nutrition fraud and did nothing to stop it.”
She also recently told the New York Post, “I struggle to believe” Rep. Ilhan Omar didn’t know. “Omar sponsored the legislation that was exploited to make the scam possible.”
Dozens of members of the Somali community have been convicted of fraudulently billing the state for millions of meals never served.
Omar responded with a statement Wednesday to Newsweek, “Any claim that I had knowledge of this scheme is flat-out false.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is planning to announce “significant law enforcement action involving fraud in Minnesota” later this morning.
Ellison wrote in an op-ed for the Star Tribune published in April 2025, “I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.”
The Daily Signal contacted Ellison’s office for a response to Hawley’s accusations. Brian Evans, Ellison’s press secretary, told the Daily Signal that Ellison already addressed the meeting Hawley referred to in an op-ed for the Star Tribune published in April 2025.
In the op-ed, Ellison wrote that his “door is always open” to his constituents. The attorney general explained that in 2021, he “took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them.”
Al Perrotta is a contributing editor for the Daily Signal.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Al Perrotta
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Make no mistake, there is fury in Minnesota. Poles are showing that Republican candidates like Mike Lindell for governor and MAGA Republican Michelle Tafoya for US Senate are leading strongly in their primaries, beating out my state’s feckless rinos. These are early polls, but many show Tafoya in the lead against Democrat candidates too, and if anyone could beat Amy Klobuchar for governor, it’s Mr. My Pillow with his known name and face. We Minnesotans are praying, hoping, and fighting for Minnesota to flip red and for these gangsters who run our state now to be convicted of the crimes they’ve committed! Have you looked at a political map for Minnesota, lately? It’s bright red all over the state except for one small blue spot at the Twin Cities. We’ve had enough!!
I’m glad this broad is going to pay a price. But I want to see Omar, Ellison, Walz, & Frye paying a price, too. The Somalis who are robbing the nation blind cannot speak or understand English, so Omar is the conduit to help them have access to government programs on an epic scale. The way to end this craziness, in addition to denaturalizing & deporting these losers, is to end ALL welfare in America.
It does my heart good to see our president and vice president going after all of the hundreds of people who have stolen our tax dollars and used it for their own gain or sent it off to their country as in the case of the Somalians!! So we took these Somalians in because they claimed amnesty and then robbed us blind!! I say NO MORE IMMIGRANTS until all the ones who came in under the Biden Cabal are deeply investigated and jailed. As for the Americans, they are NOT true Americans, they are CRIMINALS!!!! I believe that Tim Walz got money in kickbacks which is why it went on for so many years. He needs to be investigated.
Let’s abolish nonprofits. They just invite fraud. No more nonprofits please. None. Zero. Zip.
MinnesoDUH seems to be full od Leftist morons who keep electing the likes of Walz, Omar and Ellison and the other Leftist scumbags running things. Somali generated fraud is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars alone. I’d like to see them ALL in jail for life.
No shock here, someone must be thrown into the arena, it will most definitely not be the one who deserves it,. the ones on whose nod the money had flown every which way.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the two most hated women in the nation AOC and OMAR knew about this all along. AND IM SURE IS HOW THE TWO WHO HAD AVERAGE INCOMES HAVE BECOME MILLIONAIRES SINCE ELECTED FROM ALL THE RESIDUALS.. These two women should never be in any official position involved with the USA and should be deported back to the country they came from.
Re Mr AG Keith Ellison, There is no legal requirement in the Minnesota Constitution or state statutes for the Attorney General to be a licensed attorney or to have ever practiced law.
Asfor Governor, Walz is the posterchild for the new-fangled Oxy-Moronic progressive DemoncRatic Socialist party sooo… #Defrauder$
You can’t convince me that this person didn’t have inside government help now it’s one thing to put all these symphonies in jail that’s the low-hanging fruit let’s get a little deeper into this what do you say DOJ
It would be comforting and a clear “shit across the bows” for other welfare&election fraud states to see Walz, Ellison, Omar &co. Imprisoned on fraud, racketeering and perjury charges. A good use for the RICO statute.
It is hard for an ol’ coot such as myself to believe corruption such as this is goin’ on day after day, month after month, year after year. Even in MINNESOTA! It is no WONDER illegal aliens want to come to ‘Murica by the millions!!!
And Dumba$$ocrat politicians want to bend over backwards to placate them all…
I guess Bock fed into her own “future”!
All the politicians in Mn, knew of this fraud, or worse should have known. I believe Bock will be the only one to be jailed. I do hope the department of justice, deports All the Somali thieves. I, for one maybe, am tired of paying for their jail, housing and food. Also I want recovery of all assets that were obtained with the money they stole.
Maybe in a perfect world, Ellison and Walz could be jailed and all their property taken.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Omar isn’t found to have been encouraging the Somalis to look for loopholes or work-arounds in order to fraud the government in such programs.