Federally indicted Feed Our Future leader Amy Bock alleges that the Minnesota Department of Education intentionally misspelled words, mislabeled and deleted documents to prevent computer searches from being disclosed in a civil suit, violating state law.
The Department of Education sued Bock, 43, of Apple Valley, and the now-defunct St. Anthony's nonprofit a year ago in Ramsey County Circuit Court, seeking to recover legal fees the agency spent fighting a 2020 lawsuit from Feeding Our Future.
Bock — the defendant in the criminal case that prosecutors say totals more than $250 million, one of the nation's largest pandemic fraud cases — filed new counterclaims last week alleging that employees deleted large amounts of data and “knowingly engaged in deceptive practices.” . By mislabeling documents and writing the wrong words to hide documents from being included in the 2020 case.
Education Department officials declined to comment on the allegations, citing the pending lawsuit.
Examples in the BOC file include:
• One employee stated that he used a feature phone while other employees referred to “Feeding Our Future” simply with the letter “F.”
• In a 2021 letter, an employee wrote that they were trying to remove “F references, so this may not be a successful outcome for IT.” Another employee misspelled “stop payment” as “decline pays.”
• “If you spell things wrong, it's hard to see the arc of things,” one employee messaged a colleague.
• An employee encouraged a colleague to discuss something over the phone rather than in writing. One employee admitted to deleting a document related to the “Feed Our Future” program, although it is unclear what the document was.
Book, who is representing herself in the civil case and has denied any wrongdoing in the criminal case against her, is seeking an undisclosed amount in damages for the emotional distress she says the Department of Education caused her, as well as damages for “tortious interference with employment.” relations.”
Assistant Attorney General Christopher Stafford filed notice with the court that the Department of Education would seek to dismiss Bock's counterclaims. The hearing is scheduled for April 3.
Efforts by government employees to thwart public transparency are troubling, said Mark Haveman, executive director of the nonpartisan Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, a tax watchdog group based in St. Paul. He described these accusations as “jaw-dropping.”
“It raises red flags,” Haveman said. “I've never heard of using feature phones, I've never heard of intentionally misspelling things, and if that happens, [data practices act] “When a request comes in, it's not going to be understood… It just indicates that there are things that they don't want to come to light, and I don't think that exactly serves the purpose of good government.”
Attorney Jennifer Urban, who represents Feeding Our Future, not Bock, said Bock's allegations were a surprise to the organization.
“We just kind of sit and watch [Minnesota Department of Education] “And Amy are going after each other,” Urban said.
State Republicans scrutinized the Education Department's oversight of meal programs in 2022, holding Capitol hearings to question officials. The Office of the Legislative Auditor is conducting a special review of the Department of Education's oversight of the book Feeding Our Future, which was scheduled for release last summer and is now scheduled for release in March.
FBI investigation
Bock, her organizations and the Department of Education have been embroiled in lawsuits for nearly eight years over federally funded meal programs, which compensate nonprofits and schools for providing food to low-income children after school or during the summer.
Bock, who is white, accused the Education Department of discrimination, saying the agency targeted her for “breaking the rules” by working with food sites run by immigrants.
“Feeding Our Future intentionally raised false allegations against her,” Stafford wrote in court documents [the Minnesota Department of Education]including baseless (but sensational) accusations of racial bias, and deployed a barrage of frivolous litigation tactics at strategic intervals to frustrate [the department’s] “Censorship.”
Feeding Our Future quickly grew to become one of the largest sponsors of USDA meal programs in Minnesota, overseeing hundreds of food distribution sites during the pandemic, when federal waivers temporarily eased in-person monitoring and oversight. The Feed Our Future initiative went from receiving $300,000 in federal reimbursements in 2018 to more than $197 million by 2021.
The influx drew suspicion from the Department of Education, which rejected Feeding Our Future's meal site applications and then terminated some of the meal sites. As a result, Feed Our Future filed a lawsuit in November 2020.
A judge told the Department of Education in April 2021 that he saw no regulation that would allow it to stop paying to “Feed Our Future” and threatened to hold the agency in contempt of court if it did not act quickly on the requests. The Department of Education resumed payments to Feed Our Future but also contacted the FBI to report its concerns after repeated complaints to the USDA.
The FBI launched the investigation in May 2021 and raided Bock's home and more than a dozen locations in January 2022. Following the FBI raids, Feed Our Future informed the department that it would move to dismiss its lawsuit.
Last year, the Department of Education sued Bock and Feeding Our Future, seeking to recover nearly $600,000 in legal fees, alleging that Feeding Our Future's “sham” 2020 lawsuit was merely a distraction to prevent the state from disclosing Fraud.
Last week, Bock claimed in her filing that the department's lawsuit was “baseless” and “aimed to deflect attention” to its legal violations. She reiterated her previous arguments, including that the administration never investigated her nonprofit's claims that they were potentially fraudulent. In fact, she credited herself with investigating and denying meal claims for several people who recently pleaded guilty in the criminal case.
She disputed that the Department of Education told investigators that no food was served at the Feed Our Future sites, in the face that crowds at the food sites were so large that police were called in to conduct traffic control.
Some of the defendants who pleaded guilty to criminal charges admitted to not serving any food, while most admitted to inflating the number of meals.
Criminal case
Bock pleaded not guilty to the charges in 2022. Prosecutors said she received bribes as part of a kickback and kickback scheme between associates, who used the money to buy luxury cars and homes instead of feeding the children.
In December, her lawyer, Kenneth Oduiboke, said in court documents that Bock did not receive kickbacks, and even if she did receive kickbacks, the kickbacks were not inherently fraudulent or illegal. He said that Feed Our Future charges an administrative fee for its sites, which is legal. He sought a hearing to challenge the facts contained in the 2022 search warrant.
Of the 70 people charged so far, 17 have pleaded guilty. The first trials are scheduled to begin this spring.
