by WorldTribune Staff, May 18, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
The alleged “mastermind” behind the massive Covid meal fraud scheme in Minnesota claims Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar was in on the $250 million scam, a report said.
Aimee Bock, founder of nonprofit Feeding Our Future, was convicted in March 2025 of conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud for allegedly helping restaurant owners file fake or inflated claims during the pandemic to steal millions in child nutrition funds from the government.
Bock told the New York Post by video call from Sherburne County Jail, where she is awaiting sentencing: “I struggle to believe that she (Omar) wouldn’t have known.”
“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,” she added.
The Post’s Gabrielle Fahmy noted that Omar “was instrumental in loosening the laws that set the stage for the scheme — first by introducing the MEALS Act to Congress in March 2020, which allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue waivers of school-meal requirements during the pandemic.”
The waivers allowed restaurants to participate in the Covid meals program without any of the usual site inspections.
According to Bock, Omar would personally step in whenever those waivers ran out, allowing the rampant fraud to continue.
“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 claimed. “Because of course this was supposed to be a short-term thing . . . we were supposed to be home for two weeks.”
Omnar’s name was mentioned at least six times in emails and text messages presented as court exhibits in Bock’s 2025 federal trial.
According to Bock, the six email exchanges with Omar were about help with the waivers, after Feeding Our Future reached out to the “Squad” rep’s office, the Post’s report said.
“The waivers opened the floodgates for scores of Somali eateries to join in, like Safari, where Omar herself filmed a promotional video claiming ‘every day Safari provides 2,300 meals to children and their families’ in May 2020. She also held her 2018 election night party there,” Fahmy wrote.
Safari claimed to be feeding 5,000 kids a day via the federal program. Its co-owner, Salim Said, has been convicted of defrauding the government of $16 million and is awaiting sentencing.
“A lot of the sites were working directly with her, being that a lot of the operators were from the same Somali community,” Bock said of Omar. “There were a lot of people that had been reaching out to her office and staff — and I presume her personally — to work through some of those gaps with the waivers.”
Omar has been under fire since her wealth mysteriously jumped from almost nothing to $30 million in 2024, a windfall she tried to chalk up to an accounting error.
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