The trial begins for alleged leader of massive covid food fraud – inforum
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The trial begins for alleged leader of massive covid food fraud – inforum

Minneapolis – After several years of investigation, accusations and guilty grounds, a central figure in the feeding that our future case is expected in the Federal Court of Minneapolis is expected when election of jury begins on Monday 3 February.

Aimee Bock, who founded and was the CEO of the suspended twin cities non -profit, is facing the trial together with Salim SA, a former owner of a Lake Street restaurant. Last week, two defendants who had prepared to try with them, Abdulkadir Nur Salah and his brother, Abdi Nur Salah, appeared guilty.

Bock, 44, and SA, 36, is among 70 people charged since 2022 in what Minnesota US lawyer says was the largest covid -related fraud in the country.

Prosecutors claim that Bock’s organization was at the heart of a conspiracy of $ 250 million to deceive two taxpayer-funded childcare programs during the pandemic.

Government regulators initially allowed restaurants to run meals after childcare centers, programs after school and other places where the children had received subsidized meals temporarily closed.

Prosecutors say that this and other rule changes in combination with unlucky monitoring from the Minnesota Department of Education, which distributes program funds from the US Ministry of Agriculture, enabled fraud to spread “as an aggressive cancer.”

The year before Covid met, our future allocated about $ 3.4 million to meals as it sponsored. In 2021, the organization’s revenue reached almost $ 200 million, or 59 times its pre-pandemic level.

Nearly half of the people accused in the case have cited guilty. In addition to the Salah brothers, four other respondents came in guilty grounds last week. Those who maintain their innocence will test in small groups. American district judge Nancy Brasel has planned half a dozen other trials until the end of December.

Bock recruited is said to be others, mainly from Somali-American society, to open more than 200 meals around Minnesota. The operators soon submitted refund requests for an unlikely number of meals.

Feeding our future also opened their own fraudulent places in Minneapolis and Burnsville and allegedly requested bribes and kickbacks from others who wanted to participate.

Investigators claim that the Safari Restaurant raised $ 16 million between 2020 and 2021, when most of the industries barely stopped floating, after saying and his co -owner claimed falsely to have served almost 4 million meals to the children. Safari had an annual revenue of about $ 600,000 before Covid.

Safari claimed to be food sellers for others in conspiracy and also said to set up a shell company to run fake meals in St. Petersburg. Paul.

The jurors at the first feeding of our future trial saw extensive evidence of the defendant expenses for revenue on vehicles, luxury and properties. But the prosecutor’s court applications indicate that they will focus less on how Bock and said are said to spend money from the system.

Prosecutors claim that Said and two others used $ 2.4 million in stolen money to buy a building that once held a culinary school in Columbus, Ohio. Bock is accused of tuning $ 10,000 a week for his boyfriend’s business, and the spent allegedly allegedly the funds on jewelry, trips to Las Vegas and advanced car rentals.

Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, counts in a pre -application that Bock himself did not make any extravagant purchases or went to Las Vegas.

Defense lawyers are likely to emphasize that their customers gave real food to real children. Prosecutors have always said that the defendants distributed food, but it was primarily a coverage for fraudulent claims.

Bock can also try to claim that feeding our future worked with the approval of the Minnesota Department of Education. In another court application, Udoibok writes that MDE “examined and approved the feeding of our future policy and procedures no less than seven times.” Udoibok says that non -profit organizations even requested guidance from MDE after the department raised concern about feeding our rapid growth of our future.

In June, the Minnesota legislative accountant issued Judy Randall a depletion report that found that MDE approved to feed our future applications for meal sites despite fraud problems, and that a review of non -profit organizations in 2018 found major problems, but MDE never followed up.

As in the first trial 2024, lawyers can expect to see RAMS of e -mail and canceled checks along with alleged false food invoices, presence lists and paintings.

The government’s 102-page list of exhibitions includes meal bills from Safari Restaurant, which said to be alleged to be fraudulent to claim compensation for 6,000 meals he claimed had been served children every day in January 2021.

Prosecutors also have a long list of potential witnesses. In addition to federal agents and forensic auditors, the government can call former employees to feed our future that was not accused. The list also contains a dozen respondents who relied on and cooperate.

This story was originally published on MPRNEWS.ORG

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