The convicted ringleader of the Feeding Our Future fraud is blaming her Somali co-conspirators for orchestrating the sprawling billing scheme that stole more than $250 million from a federal food assistance program, insisting ahead of this week’s sentencing hearing that she, too, was duped by the Minnesota-based network of Somali fraudsters.Aimee Bock faces a statutory maximum sentence of 100 years in federal prison in what would be the lengthiest and most severe punishment yet in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, a penalty to be determined at Thursday’s sentencing hearing.Federal prosecutors have recommended a 50-year prison sentence, maintaining that Bock was the brains behind the operation.
Bock, meanwhile, is requesting either time served or no more than 37 months, followed by supervised release with mental health treatment and vocational training, for the part she, according to her attorneys, unwittingly played.
Bock points the finger at Somali accomplices
In a presentencing plea, Bock claimed that she had been made the scapegoat for the federal government’s alleged failure to identify the actual architects of the reimbursement scam.
Bock’s attorneys are arguing that authorities knew that two high-ranking Feeding Our Future employees, Hadith Yusuf Ahmed and Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, were the true masterminds of the Feeding Our Future fraud ring but pinned the bulk of the blame on Bock, the organization’s founder.
