Feeding Our Future
February 14, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I attended the Feeding Our Future trial from opening statements on Monday through adjournment for the weekend yesterday at noon. This is the second of the cases to come to trial. The indictment charged a total of 70 defendants with fraud, but this trial features the all-stars: ringleader Aimee Bock, founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, and Salim Said, co-owner of two grossly fraudulent sites, Safari Restaurant (just
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February 12, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Testimony continued yesterday in the Feeding Our Future fraud case against defendants Aimee Bock and Salim Said. Bock was the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future. Said is a former owner of Safari Restaurant, whose sites allegedly served millions of allegedly fictitious meals that Feeding Our Future processed for payment by the Minnesota Department of Education. The second day of trial featured the testimony of Benjamin Stayberg. Stayberg
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February 10, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The second case in the Feeding Our Future fraud formally commenced last week with jury selection on Monday and Tuesday in Minneapolis before Judge Nancy Brasel. Judge Brasel adjourned until opening statements today. A panel of twelve jurors and four alternates was chosen to hear the evidence in a trial that is expected to run approximately four weeks. I wrote this report at the request this afternoon of Alpha News
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February 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The second case in the Feeding Our Future fraud is scheduled go to trial before Judge Nancy Brasel in Minneapolis tomorrow. When it comes to Covid fraud, we’re number 1. The massive case originally implicated some 70 defendants. Thirty of the 70 have pleaded guilty to date. The first case went to trial against seven of the defendants this past April and resulted in five guilty verdicts. In number of
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January 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
As have observed over the past few years, Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, founder, Aimee Bock recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. Bock was the ringleader. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Bock and others defrauded the state
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January 5, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Most people likely think of political corruption in terms of bribe-taking. But there are more dangerous forms of corruption than bribery–obtaining power by violating election laws, for example, and maintaining power through lies and deceit, and buying votes by scattering public funds in disregard of legal standards. Minnesota, once regarded as a politically “clean” state, is now awash in these and other forms of corruption. Minnesota is sometimes seen as
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September 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday afternoon I was on the Howie Carr Show out of Boston, talking about the Feeding Our Future scandal–the largest, and probably most brazen, covid-era fraud. Why is the Feeding Our Future scandal important? Because it reveals 1) the incompetence of the Tim Walz administration; 2) the total lack of accountability in the Tim Walz administration; and 3) the extraordinary dishonesty of the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee. Here is my
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September 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Feeding Our Future scandal is the largest known covid-era fraud, coming in somewhere between $250 million and $500 million. It was extraordinarily brazen: various nonprofits pretended to feed many hundreds of thousands of nonexistent children, and billed Minnesota’s government. The money was federal, but the program was administered by Tim Walz’s Department of Education. Many criminal prosecutions have followed, but no heads have rolled at the Department of Education
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June 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The case of the bribed juror — $120,000 of cash in a Hallmark gift bag with a promise of more to come — in the first of the trials in the Feeding Our Future case may be more important than the massive fraud. The Feeding Our Future fraud was audacious and the amount of money involved revolting, but the assault on the system represented by the bribe is something else.
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June 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson
After three-plus days of deliberation, the jury returned with its verdict in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud trial. The verdict was read in open court at 1:00 p.m (CDT) this afternoon by Minnesota Chief Federal District Judge Pat Schiltz, our former law partner. This was the first of the trials to be held in the Feeding Our Future case, involving some $40 million in fraudulent transactions. In total the
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June 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Judge Brasel announced at the conclusion of jury instructions and a long day in the courtroom that she was sequestering the jury. This came as news to the jury. I felt incredibly sorry for them. She then held a hearing on the issue of detention of the seven defendants in light of the bribery of a juror with a bag full of $120,000 cash (100s, 50s, and 20s) at her
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June 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Following up on the adjacent post: Judge Brasel voir dired each of the remaining 17 jurors and alternates in the Feeding Our Fraud trial this morning. None had been contacted by anyone regarding the trial “by anyone, including media,” over the past six weeks. She had lunch brought in for the jury and will order their sequestration during deliberations. She intends to avoid a mistrial resulting from the attempted bribery.
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June 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I am on hand for the last of the closing arguments scheduled for this morning in the first Feeding Our Future fraud trial. When Judge Brasel took the bench she announced that she had just learned of a juror contact at home last night and that the FBI was investigating. She further announced that she had excused the juror — juror number 52. Judge Brasel intends to voir dire the
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May 30, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Attorney Steve Schleicher is a partner at Minneapolis’s venerable Maslon firm. He is the firm’s Chair of Investigations and White Collar Defense Group. His colleagues obviously think highly of him. Schleicher represented the State of Minnesota pro bono in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin. Attorney General Keith Ellison personally recruited him and was thrilled when he consented (as I found in the emails supplied by the AG’s office in response
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November 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Remember the good old days, when the most obvious difference between conservatives and liberals was that conservatives objected to wasteful government spending? Now we live in a world where wastefulness is one of liberals’ better qualities. Still, it should make us angry. More than ever, government at all levels is cavalier with taxpayers’ money, viewing it not only as their own, but primarily as a means of buying votes. Moreover,
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September 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I hope our readers will indulge the attention we have paid to the Feeding Our Future scandal here in Minnesota. The issue has, I think, national significance as it is the biggest single fraud that has so far been uncovered in connection with the trillions of dollars that the federal government shoveled out the door, ostensibly as “covid relief.” The scandal–$250 million stolen, and counting–reminds us of one of the
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September 27, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Feeding Our Future scandal is one of the worst frauds, and worst government screw-ups, of recent years. We have written about it repeatedly on Power Line, and have often turned to the person who has followed the scandal more closely than anyone, American Experiment’s Bill Glahn. Both the scale of the fraud and its brazenness are breathtaking, and the scandal has deepened with government officials’ repeated resort to falsehoods
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