MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced the woman prosecutors call the “mastermind” behind the nearly $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme to 41 years in prison.

Aimee Bock, 45, of Apple Valley, was convicted in March 2025 for her role at the top of what the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office called the single largest known pandemic-era fraud scheme in the U.S. A jury found her guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery after a roughly one-month trial.

In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Brasel ordered Bock to pay $243 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funded the meal program Bock and others defrauded.

During the Thursday morning sentencing hearing at the Minneapolis federal courthouse, Brasel said the sentence reflects the “profound and lasting damage” Bock had done to the community and state.

“Bock’s conduct was not an impulsive one-time error; it was sustained, organized, and aggressively defended, even under oath,” she said.

Brasel ruled that a severe sentence for Bock was warranted, not just because of the financial losses and harm to public trust Feeding Our Future caused, but also because of what she called Bock’s dishonesty during the trial and attempts to thwart efforts to stop payments to the nonprofit.

Seventy-nine people have been charged in connection with the Feeding Our Future scheme, where federal authorities say fraudsters stole federal aid meant for feeding needy children who were cut off from meals during school closures due to COVID-19. Before Bock, 65 had been convicted, according to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Before Brasel handed down the sentence, a tearful Bock apologized before the court for what had happened through her nonprofit, saying she felt “horrible” and “never meant to cause harm.”

“I tried, I really did, and I believed in the work I was doing, and see how wrong I was,” she said. “I’m sorry to the public, I’m sorry to the court, I’m sorry to my children and family … I never intended for things to go the way they did.”

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office had sought a 50-year prison sentence. In court filings, Bock’s attorney said her co-defendants were “the recruiters and organizers of the fraud,” and requested a sentence of time she’s already served or not more than three years.

In a sentencing memo filed Monday this week, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebecca Kline and Matthew Murphy described the fraud orchestrated by Bock as a “scheme of unprecedented scale in this country” and described its effects as “profound, immeasurable, and will have lasting consequences for both Minnesota and the nation.”

“The brazen and staggering nature of her crimes has shaken Minnesota to its core, leaving lasting damage and eroding public trust,” they wrote. “Her actions have permanently altered the state, and not for the better.”

Feeding Our Future filed for meal reimbursements with the Minnesota Department of Education, which was distributing federal money intended to help profits cover meals served at locations such as day care centers, after-school programs and summer camps.

Federal prosecutors have said individuals involved with Feeding Our Future and another nonprofit, Partners in Nutrition, claimed to serve millions of meals at locations that turned out to be mostly empty.

In all, Feeding Our Future claimed to provide 91 million meals at nearly 300 sites between 2020 and 2022, but the majority were never served, according to prosecutors.

In their sentencing memo, they said Bock had “maintained complete control of Feeding Our Future from an administrative and financial perspective.”

“She oversaw the spigot of millions of federal dollars flowing into the Feeding Our Future bank account,” they wrote. “Scheme participants received million dollar check after million dollar check — all signed by Aimee Bock.”

Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, asked the judge to base sentencing on what prosecutors had proven against her, not “on the sheer size of the broader public controversy, not on the conduct of every site operator and vendor who passed through the program.”

Udoibok also claimed in his sentencing memo that federal prosecutors hadn’t proven the $243 million had been stolen, and that the figure was based solely on the reimbursements they had received from the state between 2020 and 2022, not a loss amount.

He also argued that Bock shouldn’t be ordered to pay restitution on the entire sum lost because she was not the only person to benefit, and others had taken significantly more.

Brasel acknowledged that might be the case, but ruled against Udoibok’s objections since prosecutors had provided evidence proving Bock was central to organizing and planning the scheme.

At the beginning of the trial, Udoibok described Bock as someone who had been victimized by meal site operators who lied about serving thousands of kids.

At Thursday’s hearing, he reiterated that point and again argued that state officials had not conducted “necessary oversight.”

He noted that Bock, who doesn’t speak Somali like many of her codefendants, “relied on people in an office to tell the truth,” and described his client as a “convenient target” for federal authorities.

“She gave access to people she shouldn’t have,” he said. “In her mind, she thought she was giving them access to be good citizens and going to this program to feed their community. And that’s not what happened.”

Still, prosecutors said Bock herself had submitted “thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims, one after another, day after day” over a space of 21 months. Without her, the scheme would not have reached the scale it did, they argued.

“The gall she has now to blame the state for the fraud — and make no doubt she does blame the state — when she herself prevented any fraud from being detected, is astounding,” Kline said in court.

When the Minnesota Department of Education attempted to cut off payments to Feeding Our Future in 2021, the Bock filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination that forced the state to continue providing funds.

Payments ended with the first FBI raids on Feeding Our Future in 2022. The first wave of charges, including against Bock, came in September that same year.

“Most egregiously, when the state tried to stop payment because it was concerned about fraud, you did not help,” Brasel said. “You cried racism and filed a lawsuit.”

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