How Aimee Bock and 46 others allegedly siphoned funds from child food scheme

Aimee Bock, founder
of the now-defunct non-profit Feeding Our Future, is among 47 people accused of
siphoning off $250 million from a US government-run child nutrition programme.
While Bock has denied any wrongdoing saying she found no evidence of fraud and
even if there was fraud it had happened without her knowledge, federal
officials probing the scam see her as one of the prime accused in the case.

Beginnings of the
scam

Aimee Bock and the
46 other defendants targeted child nutrition programmes that provide free meals
to children and adults. The programmes are run by the US Department of
Agriculture and states supervise the way they distribute the funds. In Minnesota,
the funds are distributed by the state’s Department of Education.

Also Read | Aimee Bock: 3 things you need to know about Feeding Our Future founder

Meals to children
are provided either through schools or day-care centres. Many of the check and
balances for funding were relaxed during the coronavirus pandemic and
for-profit restaurants were allowed to become part of the scheme.

Largest pandemic-related
fraud

US Attorney for
Minnesota Andy Luger said that a small group of people had come together to
exploit the relaxed rules. Other soon joined and it became, according to Luger,
the largest pandemic-related fraud in the United States.

Also Read | Food fraud: $250 million stolen from children’s scheme in US, 47 charged

A number of
companies applied to provide meals to children in exchange for funds by using
Feeding Our Future to sponsor and seek funding, court documents accessed by the
Associated Press show. Feeding Our Future staff then recruited more groups to open
programme sites across Minnesota. They inflated the number of children and
meals they were serving, according to court documents.

Also Read | Who is Aimee Bock?

Feeding Our Future
then submitted false reimbursement claims, receiving an administrative fee of
10-15% in addition to kickbacks from those who sought to join the scheme, the
charges allege. Then, the scheme used shell corporations to falsify invoices
and submitted fake attendance sheets on the number of children being fed every day.
 

Role of Aimee Bock
and Feeding Our Future

Formed in 2016, the
stated purpose of Feeding Our Future was to help impoverished and minority
communities secure funding for food programmes. Earlier this year, Aimee Bock
told Star Tribune that she employed 65 people who spoke 17 languages and was
also working with 140 subcontractors to distribute 100,000 meals a day to
children in Minnesota.

An FBI affidavit
showed Feeding Our Future’s reimbursements go from $307,000 in 2018, $3.45
million in 2019, $42.7 million in 2020 and $197.9 million in 2021. Bock says
she never stole money and saw no evidence of fraud among her subcontractors.
Feeding Our Future was dissolved in February this year.