The Feeding Our Future scandal stole $242 million meant to feed hungry children and became the largest pandemic fraud in American history.
Now her appeal brief just handed Ilhan Omar a new problem she cannot ignore.
Two separate federal judges found the same thing about the law Omar wrote.
The MEALS Act Waivers That Made Feeding Our Future Possible
Aimee Bock founded the Feeding Our Future nonprofit and ran it as the ringleader of a 300-site fraud network across Minnesota. A federal jury convicted her in March 2025. She is now serving 41 years.
Bock's lawyers filed a 131-page addendum to her 8th Circuit appeal – and buried inside it was a November 2024 ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Schultz.
Schultz oversaw the probable cause review for the FBI raids that cracked the Feeding Our Future case open.
His conclusion: pandemic-era waivers first proposed in Rep. Ilhan Omar's Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act – the MEALS Act – made the federal child nutrition program "vulnerable to abuse."
Those waivers let the USDA do something it had never done before.
For-profit restaurants could now enroll in the federal child nutrition program and food distribution could move off school grounds entirely.
Adults could pick up meals on behalf of children.
Verification requirements were gutted.
Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins chairs the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee – the body that has spent months trying to get Omar under oath.
"The children had to consume the food on-site and the sites were limited," Robbins told the Washington Examiner, describing how the program worked before Omar's bill.
Once the guardrails came down, she said, "it became very clear that's when the fraud exploded."
Abdulkadir Nur Salah, co-owner of Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, pleaded guilty to wire fraud. He told the court Omar's waivers let him distribute food anywhere and skip the verification requirements.
Safari claimed to feed 5,000 children a day.
It collected more than $16 million in federal reimbursements.
Omar held an Election Night victory party at the Safari Restaurant in South Minneapolis.
Aimee Bock Appeal Cites Two Federal Judges on Omar's Law
Schultz wasn't alone.
Judge Nancy Brasel – Trump's appointee, who sentenced Bock to 41 years in May – arrived at the same conclusion in 2025 after reviewing Salah's courtroom account of which waivers he exploited.
Two federal judges – one peer-elected, one a Trump appointee – independently reviewed the evidence and pointed at the same place, Omar's MEALS Act.
The Feeding Our Future prosecution now spans 80 defendants. Sixty-nine have been convicted. Bock's network of fake food sites went from collecting $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021 – the year after Omar's bill passed.
That trajectory is in the court record.
"This wasn't accidental," Robbins told the Washington Examiner. "This was a created problem during a crisis."
She went further: Omar "knew what was in that bill when maybe other legislators didn't" – and shared that information with her community.
Omar Named in Feeding Our Future Trial Exhibits and Won't Answer
The judges aren't the only place Omar's name appears in this case.
Omar appears six times by name in the government's trial exhibits – email chains and text messages entered into evidence at Bock's federal prosecution.
One email from February 5, 2021 – while Bock's ring was actively stealing – carries the subject line "help with USDA food program" and includes Omar.
Weeks later, internal Feeding Our Future communications carried the subject line "Ilhan's Office."
The employee who sent that message was later indicted. He fled the country.
All six exhibits remain sealed.
Democrats on the Minnesota House fraud panel blocked a Republican subpoena in April that would have forced Omar to produce her communications with Feeding Our Future defendants.
The same Democrats who protected Omar from that subpoena represent constituents whose tax dollars bankrolled the scheme.
Omar introduced the MEALS Act in March 2020. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act absorbed her language that spring, making it federal law. She publicly defended those waivers when the Trump administration moved to scale them back in the fall of 2020.
When the Washington Examiner asked Omar's office to respond to Schultz's ruling, her office did not answer.
Now Bock is taking those same judicial findings to the 8th Circuit – using two federal judges' words about Omar's law to try to walk out of a 41-year prison sentence.
Whatever the appeals court decides about Bock's conviction, the findings don't go away.
Two federal judges went through the evidence independently and landed in the same place.
They put it in writing.
Omar's office won't say a word.
Sources:
- Jim Thomas, "Judge: Omar School Meal Waivers Raised Fraud Risk," Newsmax, August 26, 2026.
- "Judge in Feeding Our Future Case Found Ilhan Omar's Relaxed Provisions Made Food Program 'Vulnerable to Fraud,'" Washington Examiner, August 26, 2026.
- "Minnesota Fraud Committee Suspects Ilhan Omar of Involvement in Feeding Our Future Scheme," Washington Examiner, April 22, 2026.
- "Omar Ex-Staffer Contradicts Himself on MEALS Act Role in Fraud Probe," Fox News, May 8, 2026.
- "Feeding Our Future Convict Points at Ilhan Omar," PJ Media, May 16, 2026.
- "Federal Jury Finds Feeding Our Future Mastermind and Co-Defendant Guilty in $250 Million Pandemic Fraud Scheme," U.S. Department of Justice, March 19, 2025.