Feeding our future restaurant owner says that Covid meal sites were investments, no fraud

As accused in the feeding of our future judgment, he insisted that his Minneapolis restaurant fed thousands of children during the pandemic, prosecutors confronted Salim, said with evidence of a great leap in income once he got more involved in fraud in the now missing non -profit organization.

The Said coacusado in the trial of a week, feeding our future founder Aimee Bock, is responsible for orchestrating a $ 250 million scheme to defraud the child nutrition programs financed by taxpayers during COVID.

Prosecutors argue that he said that a co -owner of a Safari restaurant played an important role in the conspiracy.

The Lake Street business allegedly diverted $ 16 million from public coffers by operating a fraudulent food site and serving as a false supplier for others. The Government said that almost $ 6 million said personally, which spent on cars and real estate, including a $ 1.2 million house in Plymouth with an inner basketball court.

In testimony last week, Bock denied having participated in any fraud, even when main prosecutor Joe Thompson showed lots of jurors of six and seven figures to the operators of the food site that Bock had signed. Many were paid to Safari. But in the witness post on Monday, he said he insisted that his operation was legitimate.

According to the interrogation of defense lawyer Adrian Montez, said the jury who began working in the restaurant as a waiter in 2004 while he was in high school. A decade later, he bought a third of the business and soon took over everyday management.

When Covid hit 2020 and Safari had to cancel several weddings, he said he gave the food he bought instead of throwing it. Then, a man connected to feed our future told him that government reimbursement was available to feed children.

Montez showed images of the jury taken in Safari during the pandemic, including one of a stacked table with aluminum trays to carry. That said there were almost 1,700 meals only in that photo, because each covered tray had five to six meals for children.

“Are you telling this jury that Safari was doing this, they were serving 5,000 meals to the community every day?” Montez asked.

“Yes, every day we were serving this meal,” said his client.

He added that no child came to Safari; The parents collected the meals or the restaurant delivered them in bulk. Prosecutors say that Safari’s claims are very exaggerated, and the restaurant had nothing close to the ability to cook so much food.

Thompson began his interrogation by asking about a 2011 credit card fraud and a condemnation for falsification in Indiana. He said responsibility and said his uncle prepared him to blame fraudulent purchases of the computer in a Walmart.

Then, the prosecutor confronted him with tax statements prior to the COVID that showed that he said only $ 30,000 of the restaurant in 2017.

“Your company went from winning half a million dollars a year in revenue to $ 16 million in the next 18 months, is it?” He said.

“This program made your partners already rich.

“Yes, you could say that,” he said.

Later, Thompson asked about the multiple companies that he established to operate other supposed food sites and collect controls to feed our future. FBI’s forensic counters previously declared that this was an trick to hide stolen money.

Said called cash transfers among the investments of their companies.

“My work is to cook the food and when I get profits I open other businesses.”

This insisted that food sites under their control were legitimate and that researchers could have lost a purchase of food of $ 2 million from the SYSCO supplier.

“Don’t lie to this jury,” Thompson snapped before Montez opposed.

Judge Nancy Brasel then dismissed the jurors for the day. Thompson is expected to conclude his interrogation on Tuesday before lawyers make their final arguments.