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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – No case in Minnesota’s sprawling fraud scandal captures the scale of taxpayer abuse like the Feeding Our Future scheme, in which the program’s director signed off on sham meal services for the poor only to have the men around her splurge on mansions, luxury cars and lavish lifestyles.
Fox News Digital has obtained the court exhibits used at trial, including photos of the properties, vehicles and designer goods prosecutors say were purchased with stolen federal nutrition dollars.
The scheme was headed by Aimee Bock, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, an organization responsible for ensuring that needy kids didn’t go hungry during the COVID pandemic.
Bock presided over a network that claimed to have served 91 million meals, for which the scammers fraudulently received nearly $250 million in federal funds. Bock, who was convicted by a federal jury on March 19, 2025, of wire fraud, conspiracy and bribery for her role, was dubbed the scheme’s “mastermind” by federal prosecutors.
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Prosecutors say Aimee Bock, founder of Feeding Our Future, and Salim Said helped orchestrate one of the largest pandemic-relief fraud schemes in U.S. history. Both were found guilty of diverting federal child-nutrition funds into luxury homes, vehicles and other personal spending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. (Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office)
Bock approved the meal sites, some of which were fake, and then certified the claims, signing off on the reimbursements from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). At least 78 people have now been indicted in the ongoing investigation.
Court exhibits used in the case against Bock and Salim Said, a local restaurant owner, captured some of the opulent spending Said splurged his ill-gotten gains on.
For instance, Said used $250,000 in stolen nutrition funds to buy a large home in Plymouth, while another $2.7 million wire transfer linked to the fraud was routed into a Minneapolis mansion-style office building, prosecutors said, that served as the headquarters for his company, Safari Group.
The property stood in stark contrast to the daycare centers and after-school programs the federal money was supposed to help.
The exhibits also showed that Said used fraud proceeds to buy a black 2021 Mercedes-Benz GLA and a 2021 Chevy Silverado.
Said operated Safari Restaurant, a small Minneapolis eatery that claimed to be serving more than 4,000 meals per day to the poor, according to federal exhibits, while his company and co-conspirators opened additional sites, as well as dozens of shell companies, which received more than $32 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds, prosecutors said.
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A Minneapolis property at 2722–42 Park Avenue South that prosecutors said was purchased with a $2.7 million wire transfer tied to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme and used as the headquarters for Salim Said’s Safari Group. (Department of Justice)
The Plymouth home prosecutors said Salim Said purchased using a $250,000 payment traced to laundered Feeding Our Future funds. (Department of Justice)
According to the indictment, Said’s spending spree stretched far beyond the cars and houses shown in the courtroom exhibits — with additional real estate, electronics, cash transfers, restaurant buildouts and other luxury goods purchased through shell companies he controlled. Other members of the Safari group were also accused of funneling nutrition dollars into luxury cars and designer goods.
Federal prosecutors did not accuse Bock of personally buying big-ticket items with the fraud proceeds.
Instead, they said she built and protected the network that enabled others to spend the money. The exhibits show she approved the sites, signed the checks and kept investigators at bay, leaving her inner circle to splurge while she ran the system that made it all possible.
The only money movement directly tied to Bock in the exhibits was a picture of her making a $30,000 cash withdrawal, evidence, prosecutors said, that she was involved in a kickback scheme by accepting cash payments from meal-site operators in exchange for site approvals and reimbursements.
A series of reimbursement checks she signed for alleged fraud sites were also shown, evidence prosecutors said captured her role as the scheme’s “gatekeeper,” though not a big personal spender.
Empress Malcolm Watson Jr., whom the Minnesota Department of Revenue describes as Bock’s boyfriend, appears in some of the exhibits, including a photo of him inside a Rolls-Royce with Bock standing next to him. He’s pictured in another photo standing in front of a Lamborghini.
Aimee Bock beside a Rolls-Royce with Empress Malcolm Watson Jr. Prosecutors said the image illustrated the lifestyle surrounding the network but did not accuse Bock of buying the vehicle. (Department of Justice)
The latter exhibit also shows designer bags, jewelry and a white Mercedes-Benz — items prosecutors labeled as “Handy Helpers Spending” to illustrate the lavish lifestyle surrounding Bock’s network. Prosecutors made no claim that Bock bought the items herself and one co-conspirator even testified that Bock warned them not to splurge, telling them that luxury purchases would “become obvious.”
Watson earned more than $1 million for work he did as an employee of Bock’s for-profit childcare consulting business, as well as work his own remodeling company performed for that business, according to the Minnesota Department of Revenue. Prosecutors say Watson spent more than $680,000 on travel, jewelry, vehicles, cash withdrawals, or transfers to other accounts.
Watson has not been charged in the Feeding Our Future cases. He was charged with six tax-related felony offenses in September for allegedly underreporting his income for 2020 and 2021, failing to file a return for 2022 and failing to pay the income taxes he owed for those years. Watson allegedly owes more than $64,000 in unpaid income tax. He is currently being held in the Anoka County jail on a felony probation violation unrelated to the tax case.
A 2021 Mercedes-Benz GLA prosecutors said Salim Said bought with fraud proceeds using a $60,000 check. (Department of Justice)
A 2021 Chevrolet Silverado that prosecutors said Salim Said bought with stolen federal nutrition funds using a $47,000 check. (Department of Justice)
Government exhibit show designer bags, jewelry, cash piles, a Lamborghini photo and a white Mercedes prosecutors labeled as “Handy Helpers Spending” to illustrate the lavish lifestyle inside the network surrounding Aimee Bock. Prosecutors made no claim that Bock personally bought these items. (Department of Justice)
At trial, Bock’s attorneys claimed she was an unwitting administrator who trusted the wrong people and followed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules during a chaotic pandemic. The USDA supplied the federal child nutrition funds via the MDE.
Her defense team said she believed the meal sites were legitimate and was being blamed for systemic oversight failures.
Prosecutors countered that Bock personally approved many of the worst offenders, including the Safari network.
The DOJ also introduced slides showing emails and communications where Bock accused the MDE of racism when regulators questioned suspicious claims. In 2021, when the MDE grew suspicious and tried to stop the flow of funds, Feeding Our Future sued, alleging racial discrimination. A judge ordered the state to restart reimbursements — a ruling prosecutors said enabled the scheme to escalate.
“Bock lied to MDE and falsely accused state officials of racism to keep the money flowing,” one of the slides reads.
Another slide quoted a witness telling jurors, “Aimee Bock was a God,” describing how much power she held over the network.
The exhibit shows Aimee Bock at a bank counter making a $30,000 cash withdrawal, evidence prosecutors said was tied to the bribery and kickback allegations in Count 40. (Department of Justice)
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The government presented multiple slides showing that witnesses testified that Bock understood the numbers were fake or impossible and approved them anyway.
“That math ain’t mathin’,” said Cerresso Fort, the owner of SIR Boxing, describing figures he told jurors could not have been real.
Although the Safari Group was the single largest cell in the operation, prosecutors said more than a dozen additional networks operated under Feeding Our Future’s umbrella.
Taken together, these groups submitted more than $250 million in fake invoices, making the conspiracy one of the largest pandemic-era frauds in the United States.
A DOJ conspiracy diagram presented at trial shows Aimee Bock at the top of the network, with Salim Said and Safari Group operators below her. Prosecutors said Bock approved the claims that funneled millions to the men in her network. (Department of Justice)
