MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced the woman prosecutors call the “mastermind” behind the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme to 41 years in prison.
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Aimee Bock, 45, of Apple Valley, Minnesota, was convicted in March 2025 for her role at the top of what the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office called the single largest known pandemic-era fraud scheme in the U.S. A jury found her guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery after a roughly one-month trial.
In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Brasel ordered Bock to pay $243 million in restitution. In a December court filing, prosecutors had asked the court to order Bock to return $5.2 million.
The sentencing was Thursday morning at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis.
Seventy-nine people have been charged in connection to the scheme, where federal authorities say fraudsters stole federal aid meant for feeding needy children who were cut off from meals during school closures due to COVID-19. Of that number, 65 have been convicted, according to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney.
In a sentencing memo filed Monday this week, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebecca Kline and Matthew Murphy described the fraud orchestrated by Bock as a “scheme of unprecedented scale in this country” and described its effects as “profound, immeasurable, and will have lasting consequences for both Minnesota and the nation.”
“The brazen and staggering nature of her crimes has shaken Minnesota to its core, leaving lasting damage and eroding public trust,” they wrote. “Her actions have permanently altered the state, and not for the better.”
The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office had sought a 50-year prison sentence. In court filings, Bock’s attorney said her co-defendants were “the recruiters and organizers of the fraud,” and requested a sentence of time she’s already served or not more than three years.
Feeding Our Future filed for meal reimbursements with the Minnesota Department of Education, which was distributing federal money intended to help profits cover meals served at locations such as day care centers, after-school programs and summer camps.
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Federal prosecutors have said individuals involved with Feeding Our Future and another nonprofit, Partners in Nutrition, claimed to serve millions of meals at locations that turned out to be mostly empty.
In their sentencing memo, they said Bock had “maintained complete control of Feeding Our Future from an administrative and financial perspective.”
“She oversaw the spigot of millions of federal dollars flowing into the Feeding Our Future bank account,” they wrote. “Scheme participants received million dollar check after million dollar check — all signed by Aimee Bock.”
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, asked the judge to base sentencing on what prosecutors had proven against her, not the “not on the sheer size of the broader public controversy, not on the conduct of every site operator and vendor who passed through the program.”
Udoibok also pointed out in his sentencing memo that federal prosecutors hadn’t proven the $243 million had been stolen, and that the figure was based solely on the amount of reimbursements they had received from the state between 2020 an 2022, not a loss amount.
At the beginning of the trial, Udoibok described Bock as someone who had been victimized by meal site operators who lied about serving thousands of kids. He noted that Bock, who doesn’t speak Somali like many of her codefendants, “relied on people in an office to tell the truth,” and described his client as a “convenient target” for federal authorities.
Still, prosecutors said Bock herself had submitted “thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims, one after another, day after day” over a space of 21 months. Without her, the scheme would not have reached the scale it did, they argued.
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“Feeding Our Future was Bock, and Bock was Feeding Our Future,” they wrote.