https://freebeacon.com/newsletters/inside-the-countrys-largest-covid-fraud-plus-inside-israels-revamped-war-plan/Washington Free Beacon Editors
March 24, 2025
Feeding our fraud: It took jurors less than five hours to convict Aimee Bock and Salim Said on 28 counts of wire fraud, federal programs bribery, money laundering, and related conspiracy counts in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, dubbed "the shame of Minnesota" by assistant U.S. attorney Joe Thompson. Altogether a cast of almost entirely Somali immigrants stole some $250 million from the state-administered federal child nutrition program—the largest pandemic fraud in the country. How'd they do it? Minneapolis's own Scott Johnson explains:
Minnesota—mostly the Twin Cities area—is home to some 100,000 Somali immigrants, the largest Somali population in North America. Starting in the 1990s, the State Department directed thousands of refugees from Somalia’s civil war to Minnesota. As Kelly Riddell reported in a 2015 Washington Times story, Minnesota affords these refugees "some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs." Riddell quoted Professor Ahamed Samatar of St. Paul’s Macalester College: "Minnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state." After a dip in 2008, the inflow of Somalis has continued unabated and augmented by Somalis from other states. If it takes a village, Minnesota has what it takes.
The Feeding Our Future case represents old-fashioned corruption of two federal nutrition programs. Feeding Our Future was a small nonprofit that served as a "sponsor" of "sites" such as daycares that participated in the programs. In the COVID era, from April 2020 until January 2022, Feeding Our Future, along with its sites and site vendors, found it remarkably easy to bilk the programs out of millions of dollars a month by filing false claims for reimbursement supported by false meal counts, fake rosters, and bogus invoices.
The programs were administered by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. With regulatory "waivers" adopted by the department on account of COVID, the MDE proved a remarkably easy mark. It didn’t take much more than absurd claims of racism to scare the agency off its suspicions while "sites" proliferated and funds kept rolling out the door. In 2021 alone, Feeding Our Future siphoned nearly $200 million to fraudulent sites and vendors.
