Your correspondent was there for Day 3 of Aimee Bock’s testimony at the blockbuster Feeding Our Future trial going on at the Federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis.
The founder and CEO of the free-food nonprofit at the center of the sprawling scandal spent another 6 hours on the stand today.
Her attorney completed his direct examination of his client this morning. A large portion of the early session was given over to drywall and the surprisingly adept construction skills of Bock’s otherwise no good, cheating louse of a live-in boyfriend Empress Malcolm Watson, Jr. (his real name).
As a parting shot, Bock added one more name to the long list of co-defendants that she has hypo-vehiculated from the witness stand. Anab Awad, Defendant No. 33, was also indicted in an unrelated Medicaid scam back in 2021. She has since pled guilty in both cases.
We’ve previously written about a late-2021 fundraiser for a potential spin-off non-profit “Feeding Our Future II.” Donations to the new nonprofit were drawn largely from the ranks of then-current vendors of the original who would later be indicted.
Back in February 2022, shortly after the scandal broke, Bock sat down with Sahan Journal and explained the fundraiser as follows,
[Bock] said the GoFundMe campaign was intended to create a savings fund for the organization [Feeding Our Future I].
“If they donated, they donated, but there was no malice,” Bock said of the men named in the search warrant. “There was no intent behind it other than to help the organization create that reserve.”
Today on the stand, Bock spun an unlikely story about the fundraiser collecting money for Afghan refugees, a group who were never mentioned in accounts from three years ago.
Bock finished her direct testimony this morning with flat denials of each count against her in the indictment.
Her cross examination began immediately after, conducted by the lead prosecutor in the case, Asst. U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson.
Early on, Thompson elicited the quote of the trial (so far) with Bock stating,
I have been an unwilling passenger in a Lamborghini.
This was not a metaphor, but a reference to an actual incident occurring in Las Vegas some years ago. Sadly, for the spectators in the room, no follow-up question was asked. There has to be a bigger story there.
Thompson then proceeded to take Bock through a series of documents in her handwriting and with her signature. Those documents, along with many texts and emails, tie Bock directly to both the larger fraud scheme and also to her co-defendant in the current trial, Salim Said, co-owner of the Safari Restaurant of south Minneapolis.
As CEO, Bock personally signed every check issued by Feeding Our Future. The largest single recipient of funds were a group of entities all related to Safari Restaurant and Bock’s co-defendant, Said. Some $30 million went to this group.
After the lunch break, we got into the long-running feud between Bock and her nemesis, the state Department of Education (MDE). Yesterday, Bock claimed to have personally ejected dozens of miscreants from her network, in a brave and lonely effort to defend program integrity.
Thompson pointed out this afternoon that a least a dozen of the names she named were thrown out, not by Bock, but by MDE. In April 2021, MDE denied that dozen’s applications for another year’s participation in the program. Worse yet, Bock and Feeding Our Future appealed the denials (and lost). So much for Nancy Drew.
We did learn, though, of Bock penchant for recording private conversations, so perhaps a late-career shift to private detective work is still in the cards.
And it would get worse. It turns out that many of the distribution sites she bragged about tossing were officially operated by Feeding Our Future itself as proprietary sites.
Another out-of-context quote from a Bock text to a co-worker,
Also, Blackie hates white people and has shit to take me down.
I will not elaborate further.
The most damaging sequence of the day came in regard to the sale by Bock for $310,000 of of a non-operating daycare business, allegedly as a bribe/kickback from the Safari group of co-defendants. Be patient, the story is slightly convoluted.
The daycare existed only on paper as it was never licensed and had no clients. But it did hold the lease to some commercial space in Burnsville, at 1506 Southcross Drive. We visited the site some years ago,
Prior to the August 2021 sale of Bock’s unlicensed, nonoperating childcare to the Safari group, the 1506 space was used by Feeding Our Future as a proprietary food distribution site, with the food vendor of record as the Empire Cuisine and Restaurant of Shakopee. Bock, in her personal capacity, served as landlord to the FOF/Empire effort.
The tale involves a separate Feeding Our Future proprietary food distribution site in St. Paul, listed in records as FOF-Arcade. In the normal course of business, the Arcade food vendor was Star Distribution, a company controlled by Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, Defendant No. 69, and brother to Defendant No. 63, Ikram Mohamed. Ikram was a Feeding Our Future consultant and personal friend to Aimee Bock.
Bock confirmed all these facts on the stand today. Thompson then produced a check dated August 12, 2021, from Feeding Our Future (signed by Bock) for $476,000 to Safari (not Star Distribution) for supplying food to Arcade the previous month. The next day (August 13), Safari turned around and paid Bock $310,000 from the same bank account to buy the childcare business.
As for the sudden Arcade vendor switch from Star to Safari? Bock said that she “was told by staff” that Safari supplied the Arcade food for just that one month.
No childcare business was ever established. Instead, the 1506 site kept distributing food, under new management, but still under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future.
To recap, Safari Restaurant used a one-month windfall from serving another Feeding Our Future-owned food site to afford the cash to buy a nonoperational, never-licensed childcare from the same woman running their biggest client.
The cross examination of Aimee Bock will continue Friday morning at 9 am. Closing arguments in the case could come as early as Monday.