Judge denies Feeding Our Future leader's request to sanction Minnesota Department of Education

A Ramsey County judge has denied Feeding Our Future executive director Aimee Bock's request to sanction the Minnesota Department of Education for allegedly destroying and hiding evidence in a lawsuit she filed against the department.

Bock, who led the St. Anthony nonprofit at the center of a massive FBI fraud investigation, alleged this year that Education Department employees tried to cover up information by using a burner phone and misspelling words in messages to one another to evade being discovered in a 2020 suit that Feeding Our Future filed against the agency.

In court documents, an attorney for the Education Department called Bock's allegations "pure theater." District Judge Laura Nelson denied Bock's motion May 30.

Education Department officials said in court documents that Feeding Our Future wanted to "mask" its fraud by distracting the agency with "sham" litigation in 2020. Department officials contacted the FBI in 2021 about their concerns, kicking off a sweeping investigation that's led to federal criminal charges against 70 people, including Bock.

Bock denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. Her trial hasn't been scheduled yet.

In the separate civil case, the Education Department sued Bock and her now-defunct nonprofit last year, seeking to recoup legal fees from the 2020 litigation. Bock filed her own counterclaims this year.

Bock, 43, of Apple Valley, is representing herself in the civil case. She alleged in court documents that Education Department employees violated state law by deleting large amounts of data, mislabeling documents and intentionally misspelling words, such as "stoop pais" or "stop payes" instead of "stop pay," or referring to Feeding Our Future as "F" or by a code word, "peanuts," to conceal documents from the 2020 case.

One employee mentioned using a burner phone while another used a personal email account, which Bock said was done to evade producing evidence in the lawsuit. She asked Nelson in court documents to sanction the department over a "systematic scheme" to ensure "crucial evidence" that led to the 2020 lawsuit wasn't turned over.

The Education Department "should not be allowed to conceal its actions and then sue Bock for questioning its actions," Bock wrote. "People need faith that our judicial system will not tolerate such abuses."

Assistant Attorney General Christopher Stafford wrote in court documents that Bock was making "inflammatory" allegations because the department had "diligently preserved" data as it's required to do in litigation.

He wrote that the department turned over 330,000 pages of documents and internal communication in 2021, including the documents Bock is highlighting now.

"She relies on half-truths and incomplete information in an attempt to garner headlines and sidestep the actual process of presenting and testing evidence before the Court," Stafford wrote.

He said Bock misconstrued "innocent communications" and took conversations out of context. The phone she said was a burner was an inexpensive flip phone issued to a department receptionist when she worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stafford said.

Before Nelson released her order, Bock said in court documents that a decision in favor of the Education Department would set a "dangerous precedent" that organizations can hide documents from legal discovery.

In May, Nelson denied the Education Department's motions to dismiss other of Brock's claims, including that the agency violated state law by not responding to all of her data requests. The Education Department asked Nelson to reconsider, but she declined.

Nelson granted the department's motion to dismiss other claims by Bock, including defamation.

Feeding Our Future quickly grew to be one of the largest sponsors of meal programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Minnesota. The programs reimburse schools, nonprofits and day-care centers for feeding low-income children after school and during the summer. The growth drew suspicion from the Education Department, which denied Feeding Our Future's meal site applications and terminated some sites. Feeding Our Future sued in November 2020.

In 2021, the Education Department stopped all payments to the nonprofit, but a judge said he saw no regulation allowing the halt. He threatened to hold the agency in contempt if it didn't act quickly on the applications. The department resumed payments, and two supervisors contacted the FBI instead.

"I had never seen payments of that magnitude before," Emily Honer, the department's nutrition program supervisor, testified in April in the first federal trial involving Feeding Our Future's food sites.

The nonprofit agreed to dismiss the lawsuit in 2022, seven days after the FBI raided its offices and Bock's home.

Republicans scrutinized the Education Department's oversight of the meals programs in 2022, holding Capitol hearings during which they questioned officials and criticized them for not stopping the alleged fraud sooner.

The Legislative Auditor's Office is conducting a special review of the department's oversight of Feeding Our Future. That report, which was initially slated for release last summer, will examine whether the Education Department met federal rules for monitoring the nonprofit and what, if anything, it could have done differently to stop the alleged fraud. The report will be released next Thursday.