Aimee Bock, the convicted mastermind behind the massive $250 million Feeding Our Future COVID meal fraud scandal, has dropped a bombshell from jail, saying she believes Rep. Ilhan Omar knew exactly what was going on and actively helped keep the fraudulent program alive.
Bock, the founder of Feeding Our Future, spoke to the New York Post this week from Sherburne County Jail, where she is awaiting sentencing after her March 2025 conviction on conspiracy, bribery, and wire fraud charges.
Dozens of individuals, mostly from Minnesota’s Somali community, have been convicted in the scheme that fraudulently billed the federal government for tens of millions of meals that were never served to low-income children during the pandemic.
“I struggle to believe that she wouldn’t have known,” Bock said of Omar.
Bock alleged that Omar’s office repeatedly stepped in to help secure and extend USDA waivers that dramatically loosened oversight of the child nutrition programs.
Those waivers eliminated the requirement for site inspections and allowed restaurants and other non-school entities to participate, opening the floodgates to massive fraud.
Omar personally introduced the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students (MEALS) Act in March 2020, which gave the USDA authority to issue those waivers during the pandemic.
Bock claimed there were multiple gaps when waivers were set to expire, and Omar’s office helped bridge them so the fraudulent billing could continue uninterrupted.
“There had been a couple times early on that there were some gaps – a waiver would be set to expire on maybe the 15th of a month, and then the renewal didn’t kick in until the 1st,” Bock told the paper. “Because of course this was supposed to be a short-term thing . . . we were supposed to be home for two weeks.”
Omar’s name appeared at least six times in emails and text messages entered as evidence during Bock’s federal trial.
“A lot of the sites were working directly with her, being that a lot of the operators were from the same Somali community,” Bock said. “There were a lot of people that had been reaching out to her office and staff — and I presume her personally — to work through some of those gaps with the waivers.”
The congresswoman herself filmed a promotional video in May 2020 at the Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, a key site in the fraud.
In the video, Omar claimed the restaurant was providing 2,300 meals a day to children and families.
By July 2020, Safari was claiming 5,000 meals daily.
Its co-owner, Salim Said, has since been convicted of defrauding the government of $16 million, the largest single amount in the entire scheme, and is awaiting sentencing.
Bock insisted she repeatedly warned Minnesota state officials about suspicious sites, including one that claimed to serve 21,000 meals a day.
In one 2021 email chain reviewed by The Post, the Minnesota Department of Education responded that it “takes no position if fraud has taken place.”
The Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee recently concluded that Omar, along with Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, “played critical roles in creating and enabling” the fraud.
The committee has asked the U.S. House Oversight Committee to subpoena Omar’s communications.
Omar’s office has not responded to requests for comment from The Post or other outlets.
Bock faces a potential 100-year sentence but is hoping for time served, arguing she was scapegoated as the only non-Somali and non-Somali-speaking defendant among roughly 80-90 people charged.
“The notion that I’m personally responsible for all of it… is so frustrating. I’m the only white person out of 80 or 90 individuals [charged in the fraud]. I’m the only one that doesn’t speak the language,” Bock told the Post.
Omar’s district contains the highest concentration of Somali immigrants in the United States, and many of the fraud defendants came from that community.
The congresswoman has denied any personal knowledge of the scheme.
The post Ilhan Omar Knew About $250 Million Somali Fraud Scheme, Convicted Mastermind Claims in Explosive Jailhouse Interview appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.