Two men sentenced in $250M Feeding Our Future fraud scheme

Two men were sentenced to prison Wednesday for their role in what prosecutors call the largest pandemic fraud case in the country.

Ahmed Ghedi was sentenced to more than five years in prison, while Abdihakim Ahmed was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, according to court documents. Both men were convicted of wire fraud and money laundering.

Both men, like many of those convicted in the case, fraudulently claimed to be running a child nutrition site, prosecutors said. He claimed to be feeding thousands of children a day at a site in St. Paul, taking federal COVID-19 relief funds to do so.

According to prosecutors, Ahmed and others spent those funds — about $7.3 million in total — to buy a car and property, as well as paying kickbacks to a Feeding Our Future employee.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota says Ghedi received $7.2 million total from the Federal Child Nutrition Program through fraudulent claims.

Aimee Bock was sentenced to 500 months in prison on multiple criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery. Bock, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, was found in court to have orchestrated the defrauding of the Federal Child Nutrition Program out of a quarter of a billion dollars. Salim Said, a co-defendant in Bock's trial, was also convicted on multiple counts.

Dozens of others have also been convicted in connection with the Feeding Our Future scheme.