Aimee Bock, the convicted founder of the nonprofit at the center of Minnesota's quarter-billion-dollar COVID meal fraud, says she finds it impossible to believe Rep. Ilhan Omar was unaware of the massive theft unfolding in her own congressional district, and claims she has the emails to prove state and federal officials were warned.

Speaking to the New York Post by video call from Sherburne County Jail, the 45-year-old Bock, who was convicted in March 2025 of conspiracy, bribery, and wire fraud, laid out a detailed account of how Omar's legislative handiwork, personal connections to implicated meal sites, and repeated interactions with Feeding Our Future created conditions for the fraud to flourish.

Her claims land at a moment when Minnesota's own Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee has concluded that Omar, Gov. Tim Walz, and Attorney General Keith Ellison "played critical roles in creating and enabling" the fraud. That same committee asked the House Oversight Committee to subpoena Omar, a step prompted, in part, by her refusal to turn over communications with Bock and Feeding Our Future.

The scheme and the waivers that made it possible

The fraud revolved around Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that reviewed reimbursement paperwork from local restaurants, submitted claims, and distributed federal funds meant to feed low-income children during the pandemic. In March 2020, Omar introduced the MEALS Act in Congress, which allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue waivers of school-meal requirements. Those waivers let restaurants participate in the program without the usual site inspections.

What followed was a gold rush. Restaurants across Minneapolis and St. Paul, many in Omar's fifth congressional district, home to the majority of Minnesota's roughly 108,000-strong Somali community, signed on. Some of the claims were staggering. One St. Paul establishment, House of Refuge, reported serving 21,000 meals a day. Its owner was later sentenced to three and a half years in prison for fraudulently obtaining $2.4 million in federal funds.

Then there was Safari, a Minneapolis restaurant where Omar held her 2018 election night party. In a May 2020 promotional video, Omar declared that "every day Safari provides 2,300 meals to children and their families." By July, Safari was claiming to feed 5,000 kids daily. Co-owner Salim Said has since been convicted of defrauding the government of $16 million and awaits sentencing.

Bock told the Post that many of the meal sites worked directly with Omar's office because the operators came from the same Somali community the congresswoman represents.

"A lot of the sites were working directly with her, being that a lot of the operators were from the same Somali community."

Bock's account: Omar stepped in when waivers lapsed

Bock described a pattern in which Omar would personally intervene when the federal waivers, the legal mechanism that allowed restaurants to bill taxpayers without oversight, were about to expire. Gaps would open between an expiring waiver and its renewal, and Omar's office would help bridge them.

"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 said people from the meal sites reached out directly to Omar's office and staff, "and I presume her personally", to work through those gaps. The implication is clear: Omar was not a distant bystander but an active participant in keeping the pipeline of federal dollars open.

Omar's name surfaced at least six times in emails and text messages presented as court exhibits during Bock's 2025 federal trial. The Washington Examiner reported that federal trial exhibit descriptions in United States v. Bock reference emails and text messages between Bock and staff in Omar's office during the period of the fraud.

Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, a member of the oversight committee, told the Examiner that Omar "has never responded to our multiple inquiries" for records related to those communications.

"Representative Omar had some role, whether inadvertent or not."

Omar did not answer the Post's request for comment either.

Warnings ignored, fraud excused

Perhaps the most damning part of Bock's account involves what happened when she tried to blow the whistle. She told the Post she sent reports to the Minnesota Department of Education in 2021 flagging restaurants she suspected of fraud, including House of Refuge, which was claiming 21,000 meals per day from a single location in St. Paul.

The response she received was remarkable. In an August 2021 email chain reviewed by the Post, the Minnesota Department of Education's Director of Nutrition Program Services wrote that the department "takes no position if fraud has taken place."

The state agency responsible for overseeing the program told the person reporting fraud that it had no opinion on the subject. Bock now calls that exchange her biggest regret, not the fraud itself, but accepting the government's answer.

"Accepting the answer that the government doesn't take a position on fraud.... I don't think I comprehended just the magnitude of how important that statement would be."

She also said she struggled to believe that state officials who received her warnings failed to alert the governor or federal representatives. The Newsmax report on the case noted that while Omar has not been charged, Bock's claims center on the argument that Omar helped push for the very USDA waivers that reduced oversight and allowed the fraud to metastasize.

The pattern of federal fraud investigations in Minneapolis extends well beyond this single case, raising broader questions about institutional oversight failures in the region.

A political motive to look away?

Bock offered a pointed theory about why officials showed so little interest in pursuing fraud in the Somali community. She told the Post that politicians were "trying to woo back the ethnic enclave", suggesting that the political value of the community's votes outweighed the imperative to investigate obvious red flags.

That theory gains weight when set against the timeline. Omar introduced the MEALS Act in March 2020. She filmed the Safari promotional video two months later. The fraud ballooned through 2020 and 2021. By 2024, Omar's personal wealth had jumped to as much as $30 million, according to the Post.

Bock, who faces a potential 100-year sentence from prosecutors, expressed frustration at being cast as the sole architect of the scheme.

"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."

That quote will draw its own controversy. But the underlying point, that a vast network of people participated in the fraud while political leaders looked away, is harder to dismiss. The federal government's broader crackdown on pandemic-era fraud has exposed similar patterns in other states, though few cases rival the scale of Minnesota's Feeding Our Future scandal.

The committee report and the subpoena request

Minnesota's Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee did not mince words. Its report, released this week, concluded that Omar, Walz, and Ellison "played critical roles in creating and enabling" the fraud. The committee has asked the House Oversight Committee to subpoena Omar, a step that reflects the congresswoman's continued refusal to cooperate with state-level investigators.

The report's conclusion is a finding from a state legislative body, not a criminal charge. But it represents a formal institutional judgment that three of Minnesota's most prominent Democratic officials bear responsibility for a fraud that drained a quarter of a billion dollars from programs meant to feed children.

Omar's record of controversy is well documented. She has faced scrutiny over foreign policy votes and has been the subject of heated disputes within her own party. But the Feeding Our Future case is different in kind. This is not a policy disagreement. It is a question of whether a sitting member of Congress helped create the conditions for one of the largest pandemic fraud schemes in American history, and then refused to answer questions about it.

The committee's request for a subpoena suggests that voluntary cooperation is not forthcoming. Omar's silence, no response to the Post, no response to the state committee's multiple inquiries, speaks for itself.

Even the physical landscape of the scandal tells a story. Across Minneapolis, Omar's district bears the marks of institutions that collected federal dollars and delivered little in return.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over this case. What exactly did Omar's office communicate to Bock and Feeding Our Future in those six documented exchanges? What did Omar know about the meal counts being claimed by Safari and other sites she publicly promoted? And why has she refused to produce the records that might answer those questions?

Bock is a convicted felon facing the possibility of spending the rest of her life in prison. Her credibility is legitimately in question. But her claims do not exist in a vacuum. They are supported by trial exhibits, a state committee report, email chains reviewed by journalists, and a pattern of non-cooperation from Omar's office that raises more questions than it resolves.

A quarter of a billion dollars meant to feed hungry children during a pandemic ended up in the pockets of fraudsters. The woman who founded the nonprofit that distributed the money is behind bars. The politicians who the state's own investigators say enabled the scheme are still in office, and still not talking.

When the government tells you it "takes no position on fraud," you should believe it. That is exactly the position it took.