A judge who presided over the Feeding Our Future case out of Minnesota found that the child nutrition program’s relaxed enrollment provisions, originally introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and touted to her Somali constituents, made its reimbursement system “vulnerable to fraud.”
Aimee Bock, the convicted Feeding Our Future ringleader, filed an addendum on Friday to her appeal that attached those program integrity findings from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Schultz.
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Bock was the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit organization in Minneapolis that enrolled hundreds of other organizations as food distribution sites in the meal delivery program, despite many of the food distributors being bogus businesses.
While serving as a sponsor to these fake food suppliers, Feeding Our Future retained a 10%-15% cut of their reimbursement checks as an administrative fee. That sprawling conspiracy, which amounted to more than $240 million in stolen child nutrition money, became what’s now known as the largest-ever scheme to take advantage of federal COVID-19 relief programming.
Some officials have traced the scam’s origins back to legislation Omar sponsored in 2020 that drastically relaxed the free food program’s registration requirements in order to provide student lunches outside of the traditional school setting during the COVID shutdowns.
Recently submitted court documents in Bock’s appeals case show that the federal judge who previously oversaw the criminal proceedings reached the same conclusion. According to a November 2024 ruling included in Bock’s 131-page appellate filing, Schultz blamed widespread abuse of the food assistance program on pandemic-era waivers, which were a key provision of Omar’s Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act.
Schultz, a peer-elected judge not selected by presidential appointment, determined that the emergency relief waivers — first proposed by the congresswoman’s MEALS Act — opened the door to large-scale fraud.
Omar had proposed enrollment expansions to the federally funded U.S. Department of Agriculture program that would permit nonschool-based caterers to register through waivers and claim compensation for the cost of meals purportedly served. Eventually, the programmatic changes that waived away the standard restrictions on who could receive funding to provide meals were tucked into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a sweeping COVID relief package. The massive bill’s subsection approving the waiver exemptions explicitly named the MEALS Act and included Omar’s statutory language word-for-word.
Schultz mentioned that the reimbursements, allocated from federal child nutrition funds, were supposed to help feed disadvantaged children at the height of the pandemic. “However, certain United States Department of Agriculture waivers during the COVID-19 pandemic made the federal child nutrition programs vulnerable to abuse,” Schultz wrote beneath a subsection, titled “FACTS.”
In his ruling, which weighed whether there was probable cause to raid the Feeding Our Future sites, Schultz said he drew those facts from supporting FBI affidavits and accepted them as true.
“Among other things, USDA allowed for-profit restaurants to participate in the program,” Schultz’s ruling noted of the exceptions authorized by the waivers. “It also allowed for off-site food distribution to children outside of educational programs.”
Schultz cited a co-conspirator’s statements suggesting that the Feeding Our Future fraudsters were incentivized by the waivers to scale up operations.
‘Many pieces of circumstantial evidence’
Abdulkadir Nur Salah, who later pled guilty to wire fraud and admitted as part of the plea agreement to “exploit[ing] changes in the program,” had pointed to the waivers “allowing food to be distributed outside of structured settings, lifting verification requirements, letting adults pick up meals for children, and allowing multiple meals to be packaged together.”
Salah was a co-owner and operator of Safari Restaurant, one of the top food distribution sites in the Feeding Our Future sponsorship network that claimed to feed as many as 5,000 children a day.
“Here, the implausibility of the Safari Restaurant’s large meal counts is one of many pieces of circumstantial evidence,” Schultz wrote. Elsewhere in the court order, the judge reiterated, “These waivers left the programs vulnerable to fraud.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel, an appointee of President Donald Trump who went on to hand down Bock’s 41-year prison sentence, agreed with Schultz’s assessment in 2025. Brasel recounted that Salah referenced “waivers that (1) loosened the requirements for where food could be distributed from, (2) loosened eligibility verification, (3) allowed adults to pick up meals on behalf of children, and (4) allowed multiple meals to be packaged together.”
Federal and state GOP lawmakers have long suspected Omar of involvement of some kind in the Feeding Our Future scandal, which originated in the Minnesota Democrat’s congressional district and involved dozens of Somali immigrants from Minneapolis, where her legislative office is headquartered inside a Somali-focused community center that received redirected Feeding Our Future donations.
Minnesota Republican state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the chairwoman of the state’s House fraud prevention and oversight committee, said the food program beforehand was fairly safeguarded against fraud.
“The children had to consume the food on-site and the sites were limited,” Robbins said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Once they took the guardrails off of who was eligible and who could provide the food, opening it up to restaurants and nonprofits, it became very clear that’s when the fraud exploded.”
Robbins, whose anti-fraud committee has been investigating Omar, recalled that the program went from serving normal numbers of students to “astronomical counts that didn’t even make sense.” She said one site was feeding more meal recipients than there were residents in that entire town.
“All common sense went out the door when the guardrails came off, and that is squarely on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s shoulders,” Robbins said. “She authored this bill, and that’s what created all of the conditions for this massive fraud in the school nutrition program.”
The Washington Examiner previously reported that Omar’s base of operations in Minneapolis is located within a community center serving Somali clients, to which she forwarded along campaign funds that came from a pair of convicted Feeding Our Future operatives. In 2022, Omar passed along those campaign contributions to the Somali-aligned community center, which also operates as a food pantry, prior to it housing her congressional office and campaign headquarters.
SOMALI FUGITIVE FLEEING MINNESOTA FRAUD CHARGES IS AN ILHAN OMAR DONOR
Omar, a Somali refugee herself, directly promoted the MEALS Act to her Somali constituents. In 2020, she filmed a promotional video at Safari Restaurant, which was broadcast on Somali TV of Minnesota. The clip showed Omar touting the MEALS Act’s passage while advertising Safari Restaurant, which served “contemporary Somali cuisine,” as a place where such subsidized meals were available.
Safari Restaurant was a frequent venue location and caterer for the congresswoman’s campaign events, both while she served in the Minnesota House and when she initially sought a seat in Congress. Omar held her 2018 election party at Safari Restaurant following her first congressional victory and continued to use it as an event space and catering service, charging the site 12 times over a two-year period. Between 2018 and 2020, she spent almost $10,000 at the locale on food, beverages, and rental fees.
Salim Said, another co-owner of Safari Restaurant and a high-ranking Feeding Our Future associate, was jointly tried with Bock and convicted alongside the fraud ring’s mastermind.
Omar’s office appears to have communicated with Bock when Feeding Our Future was actively defrauding the federal government, but the congresswoman has since refused to hand over records of their past correspondence. Court documents citing 2021 communications between Bock and congressional staffers in Omar’s office were entered as government exhibits in the fraud kingpin’s federal trial. The entries mentioned multiple texts and email chains, including an exchange requesting “Help with USDA Food Program.”
Robbins said the modifications to the USDA meal program was a deliberate act, that regardless of whether it intended to invite fraud, ultimately set the stage for the Feeding Our Future plot.
“This wasn’t accidental,” Robbins told the Washington Examiner. “This was a created problem during a crisis. And the fraudsters then took advantage of the COVID crisis to leverage it.”
Bock is asking the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn her bribery and wire fraud convictions, whether via an acquittal or another trial. Alternatively, she is requesting that the appeals court at least lower her prison term and reconsider the $242 million she owes the federal government in restitution.
FEEDING OUR FUTURE MASTERMIND SAYS SOMALI ACCOMPLICES SCAMMED HER
In all, 80 suspects have been charged in connection with the Feeding Our Future case, including 69 co-conspirators who have been convicted. Feeding Our Future was responsible for sponsoring roughly 300 of the meal delivery sites in Minnesota that were registered in the federal food program.
Omar’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
