Federal prosecutors say Aimee Bock, the convicted ringleader of the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, has been running a jailhouse campaign to leak protected court documents to lawmakers and journalists, all in an effort to minimize her role before a May 21 sentencing that could put her behind bars for decades.
The United States Attorney's Office filed a motion this week alleging Bock directed her college-age son to download large volumes of discovery material from her Dropbox account and send it to a member of the Minnesota House, a reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune, and Republican officials in Washington, D.C. The filings describe recorded jail calls in which Bock allegedly coached her son on what to send, whom to send it to, and how to strip markings that would reveal the documents came from her criminal case.
Prosecutors are asking the court to sanction Bock, seize her son's computer, and potentially bar her from any contact with her sons ahead of sentencing. WCCO first reported on the motion, which paints a detailed picture of a defendant who, even from behind bars, appears determined to manipulate the process.
The motion traces Bock's alleged conduct back to at least February. On a March 16 recorded jail call, prosecutors say she instructed her son to download documents from her Dropbox and draft an email claiming that "Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, and the Minnesota Department of Education intentionally set Feeding Our Future and Aimee Bock up as a scapegoat." By March 27, the motion alleges, Bock was telling her son to send files to "Republicans in DC," a person described as the "guy who told Ellison he should be in jail," and "right wing people the Trump follows."
Court documents say Bock instructed her son on multiple occasions to remove exhibit stickers or other markings that would identify the materials as coming from her criminal case. That detail matters. Protective orders exist to keep discovery material, which can include witness statements, cooperator identities, and sensitive investigative records, from circulating publicly before trial or sentencing.
On another call, Bock allegedly told an unidentified woman that she had "snitch[ed] on nobody" but added: "we're blowing s*** up now. We're leaking all kinds of documents." Prosecutors characterized the entire effort as what "can best be described as a public relations campaign."
The government says it learned last week that a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter had obtained copies of documents that "could only have come from the government's discovery disclosures, in violation of the Court's Protective Order." Prosecutors said they could not determine with certainty who provided the documents to the reporter but added that "it seems apparent that Bock, or an individual acting on her behalf, is responsible."
An April 19 phone call, prosecutors allege, revealed that Bock's attorney Kenneth Udoibok and an editor at the Star Tribune were planning the timing of a story's publication to "favorably color her role in the fraud" and "garner the most strategic advantage." The Star Tribune told WCCO it "cannot comment on stories we may or may not be working on, or on our reporting process."
That a convicted fraudster's defense team would allegedly coordinate story timing with a major newspaper, using illegally leaked materials, raises serious questions about how far Bock's operation reached. The motion does not accuse the Star Tribune of wrongdoing, but the allegation puts the paper in an uncomfortable spot.
The government's requested remedies are steep. Prosecutors asked the court to sanction Bock, require her to relinquish control of her Dropbox account, and surrender all physical and electronic copies of protected material in her possession, including her son's computer. They also suggested a no-contact order barring Bock from communicating with her sons before her May 21 sentencing.
The motion made the stakes plain, warning that "Bock's leaking of protected material into the public domain is directly and highly harmful not only to the government's prosecution, but also to the safety of those witnesses who have chosen to come forward and speak to law enforcement." It added: "Protective orders are entered to prevent exactly this type of conduct, and Bock should be sanctioned accordingly for her manipulation of the criminal justice process."
A motion hearing is scheduled for Thursday. The court has not yet ruled on the requested sanctions.
Bock's attorney pushed back in a statement to WCCO, insisting his client "doesn't mean any harm." He framed her conduct as the desperate act of a mother whose children are trying to advocate for her:
"In an inartful way, her kids, who are under 19 years of age, are hoping that the media and the legislative branch see their mom's plight. Aimee is not trying to harm or intimidate anyone; rather, she wants the whole truth out before the legislature and the president. She's crying for help."
That framing sits uneasily alongside the recorded calls in which Bock allegedly coached her son to strip identifying markings from case documents and target specific political figures for maximum leverage. "Crying for help" is one way to describe it. Running a coordinated leak operation from a jail phone is another.
Bock was found guilty in March of last year on all criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery. A judge later ordered her to forfeit more than $5 million in proceeds from the scheme. She faces up to 33 years in prison, as the New York Post reported in covering her first public comments from jail, in which she claimed she had "lost everything" and tried to shift blame to state officials who approved meal site operations.
The Feeding Our Future case remains the largest pandemic-era fraud prosecution in the country. Since 2021, 92 people have been charged in the schemes, and 67 have been convicted. Five more defendants pleaded guilty last month for their roles in the scandal. The program's claims ballooned from $3.4 million in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021, a growth curve that should have set off alarms long before it did.
Bock's scapegoat narrative, that Walz, Ellison, and the Minnesota Department of Education bear the real responsibility, is not new. She has pushed that line since her conviction. And it is true that serious questions remain about what Minnesota officials knew and when they knew it. A House Oversight report found that Walz and Ellison were aware of large-scale fraud for years and that whistleblowers were punished rather than heeded.
But the existence of state-level failure does not erase what a federal jury already determined: that Bock orchestrated a conspiracy that stole a quarter of a billion dollars from programs meant to feed children during a pandemic. The two things can be true at once. And leaking protected materials from jail does not advance accountability, it undermines the legal process that is supposed to deliver it.
The broader Minnesota fraud crackdown continues to expand. The FBI recently executed 22 search warrants at Minneapolis childcare businesses as part of a sweeping probe into related fraud. And the political fallout has not spared elected officials either, with congressional investigators sending their findings to the DOJ as criminal referrals loom for state leaders who may have looked the other way.
What prosecutors describe in this motion is not a one-off lapse in judgment. It is a months-long, deliberate campaign, recorded on jail phones, no less, to circumvent a court order and shape public perception before a judge decides how long Bock will spend in prison. She allegedly targeted lawmakers, reporters, and political operatives. She allegedly told her son to scrub the documents so they wouldn't look like case materials. And she allegedly bragged about it on a monitored line.
If the allegations hold up, Bock did not just violate a protective order. She treated the federal court system as one more institution she could game.
The people who deserve attention in this story are the witnesses whose safety prosecutors say is now at risk, and the taxpayers whose money was stolen in the first place. Protective orders exist to shield them. When a convicted defendant allegedly shreds those safeguards from a jail cell, the court has every reason to respond with force.
Accountability is not a public relations problem to be managed. It is a verdict already rendered, and a sentence still to come.
