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Feeding our Future trial: Witness unaware of role
Witnesses spoke on Tuesday in the trial of Aimee Bock, who is accused of being a leader in the Feeding our Future COVID-19 pandemic funds fraud. One testifier, who was previously listed as the president of its board of directors, claims he had no idea he was even in the role, and that his signature had been forged. FOX 9’s Rob Olson has more.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - On the second day of the federal fraud trial of Aimee Bock, alongside alleged co-conspirator Salim Said, two witnesses for the government testified about two very different experiences with falsified paperwork.
"I serve drinks."
What we know:
When a federal prosecutor showed Ben Stayberg the Feeding Our Future organizational chart, he was shocked to see his name listed at the top as its board president.
"Were you the president of the board of directors at Feeding Our Future? No," he replied. "I had no idea that I was any part of that."
Stayberg said he met Aimee Bock in 2018 or so, through mutual friends when they came into the St. Paul restaurant where he tended bar.
He was shown the documents that installed him on the board, saying that he’d never seen any of them and the signature was not his.
One listed his experience in food service management, to which he chuckled "I serve drinks."
The same was true of minutes from board meetings. His name was on them, including one that indicated he made a motion to expand the number of meal sites, but he said he was not there.
Aimee Bock: ‘Innocent victim’?
The other side:
On cross-examination, Aimee Bock’s defense attorney pointed out that Stayberg couldn’t say that Bock was the one who falsified all these documents, to which Stayberg admitted he had no idea who filled them out, since he was unaware of any of it.
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, is trying to build a case that Bock was the victim of other people’s lies, and that she was unaware of false claims made by employees and meal providers.
Others committed the crimes, he argued, and she only processed paperwork, trusting what was reported to her was truthful.
Also on the stand, a Faribault woman who pled guilty in 2023 for her role in the fraud.
Lul Ali ran a restaurant in Faribault and was recruited in 2020 to join the Feeding Our Future meal program.
Her restaurant could provide nowhere near 1,000 meals a day, as Aimee Bock had her claim, she testified. Later, as the fraud grew, she says Bock pushed her to 2,000 a day.
"Everything is lie. They know that," she said. "They taught me how to do this."
Bock’s attorney pressed her to admit that she was the one who falsified reports, she was the one who wrote down blatantly fraudulent numbers – not Aimee Bock.
But Ali insisted that Aimee Bock knew what was happening, because she gave the instructions to make up numbers.