Abdikerm Eidleh Returned to Minnesota in $250 Million Pandemic Fraud Case

Q: As the charity head blames her staff from prison, who really masterminded the massive fraud scheme?

Aimee Bock remains the person authorities and the court identified as the chief mastermind of the Feeding Our Future fraud, even though she has tried from prison to shift blame to staff members including Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh and Hadith Ahmed. The strongest evidence points to Bock as the central organizer. Prosecutors said she controlled Feeding Our Future, signed the key checks and applications, certified meal claims under penalty of perjury, and enabled the nonprofit to function as the vehicle for the fraud. A federal judge, sentencing her to nearly 42 years, said she was at the “epicenter” of the scheme. Jurors also rejected her defense that others were really in charge. That does not mean Eidleh was minor. Prosecutors describe him as one of the masterminds or orchestrators and effectively a top lieutenant. He allegedly ran a pay-to-play system inside the nonprofit, recruited fraudulent meal sites, collected bribes and kickbacks, used shell companies, and moved more than $5 million through those entities. His arrest in Somalia and return to the U.S. underscore how important investigators believe his role was. So the clearest answer is that this was not a one-person fraud, but Bock was the overall ringleader in the eyes of the court and prosecutors, while Eidleh was a major architect and operational driver within the scheme. Bock’s attempt to pin the fraud mainly on her staff has not changed the legal finding that she led it.

2 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 17

Somali authorities handed over Abdikerm Eidleh, 42, this week after detaining him in Mogadishu late last month, sending him to federal court in St. Paul nearly four years after U.S. officials began seeking him.
The return was unusually complex because Somalia and the United States have no extradition treaty; Somali officials instead expelled him to an undisclosed neighboring country, where FBI agents took custody.
Prosecutors say Eidleh was a top associate of Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock in a scheme that billed the government for hundreds of millions of dollars in meals never served to low-income children.
79 people have been charged in the case and 68 convicted so far; Bock received more than 41 years in prison in May, and the Justice Department has called it the largest Covid-era fraud case of its kind.
The handover also carried political sensitivity in Somalia, where supporters protested Eidleh's arrest and his clan pressed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's government to release him.