Federal prosecutors said the defendants — a network of individuals and organizations associated with Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota-based nonprofit — allegedly funneled misappropriated federal pandemic funds on luxury cars, homes and other personal purchases to something which amounted to a case of “brazen” theft.
“These indictments, which support the largest pandemic fraud scheme charged to date, underscore the Department of Justice’s ongoing commitment to combating pandemic fraud and holding perpetrators accountable,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The alleged scheme focused on the Federal Child Nutrition Program, which is administered by the Department of Agriculture to provide free meals to children of lower-income families. Congress expanded the program significantly during the pandemic, including allowing a wider range of organizations to distribute food to a wider range of locations.
Changes in federal law opened the door for Feeding Our Future to play a bigger role in distributing meals, the Justice Department says, and the group disbursed more than $200 million through 2021. In doing so, however, the feds Prosecutors alleged that the company’s founder and CEO, Aimee Bock, oversaw a massive fraud scheme in Minnesota.
The company could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
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It was the biggest emergency spending spree in US history: Two years, six laws and more than $5 trillion meant to break the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic. The money saved the US economy from disaster and put vaccines into millions of guns, but it also spawned unprecedented levels of fraud, abuse and opportunism.
In a year-long investigation, The Washington Post follows the Covid money trail to figure out what happened to all that cash.
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Bock recruited individuals and companies that “falsely claimed to serve meals to thousands of children a day,” prosecutors allege. Some of the defendants created shell companies to enroll in the program and operate as meal delivery sites, according to the government. In other cases, the Justice Department alleges the defendants submitted fake names of children receiving meals and fake invoices for food purchases that never took place.
Feeding Our Future ultimately collected $18 million in administrative fees that in the eyes of the government it was “not entitled” to receive. The company’s employees also appeared to solicit “bribes and kickbacks” from individuals and companies it sponsored, the government says.
