Aimee Bock & Salim Said: Defrauding Our Future

0:06In January of 2022, the FBI conducted the largest raid in Minnesota state history. The only comparison that he could come up with was someone like Bernie Madoff. They broke into an office and several homes. And these weren't modest properties. We're talking luxury real estate, the kind with indoor basketball courts and high-end cars parked out front. They went above and beyond to trick the government into thinking they were really doing this. That kind of raid isn't unusual. The FBI does it all the time. Normally, it's drug dealers or sex traffickers that have that kind of money laying around.

0:50The unusual part was who they were targeting. Not a drug cartel, not a trafficking ring, but a nonprofit. One called Feeding Our Future. I mean, you're talking about a scheme with so many tentacles that even the great crime drama writer probably couldn't come up with. Their stated mission was to help feed children in need. But somewhere along the way, it became a plot to defraud the public out of as much money as possible, all while leveraging the court against the government, suing for racism to keep them from looking too closely into where the money was going.

1:42This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Amy Bach and Salim Saeed defrauding our future. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we examine how Amy Bach and Salim Saeed, along with dozens of others, used the chaos of COVID-19 as a cover to turn a crisis into a conspiracy. This is a story about hundreds of millions of dollars stolen, rampant lies, shell companies, lavish spending, and justice served up cold.

2:36There are some partnerships that just make sense. Salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly, Bonnie and Clyde. They work well together, and they become more than the sum of their parts. Today, we're digging into a dynamic duo that clicked in a way that took the FBI and Minnesota's child nutrition programs by storm. Meet Amy Bach and Salim Saeed. They are two very different people from very different walks of life who were drawn together by one thing, opportunity. Let's start with Amy Bach. Bach got her start professionally in the world of Minnesota's non-profit organizations. She spent years in education and administration.

3:22By all outward appearances, your typical non-profit director, soft-spoken, glasses, the kind of woman who wouldn't stand out in a grocery store line. But behind her unassuming appearance was someone with a serious knack for working the system. If you looked at her resume, you might think, here's someone who just wants to help. But as the old saying goes, not everyone who smiles at you is your friend. And it turns out, Bach's smile was hiding something. We spoke with Joey Peters, a reporter with the Minnesota-based Sahan Journal, who has followed Bach's story closely. She has an interesting history.

4:05If it wasn't for this, she would seem like any other person, right? She has a degree in teaching elementary ed and kind of worked in daycares. Before Feeding Our Future, Bach worked for another organization called Partners in Quality Care, which, as it turns out, was later implicated in fraud. And her time there appears to have laid the groundwork for what came next. The leader of this other organization and Amy worked together and were best friends. And somewhere along the way, they turned into frenemies and had a falling out. And Amy started feeding our future on her own as a kind of a rival organization.

4:57So Box started feeding our future at least partly out of spite, which doesn't seem like the best motivation for starting an enterprise. Still, her organization's stated purpose was to distribute federal food aid, particularly in underserved communities in Minnesota. It was part of a broader USDA program that funneled money through state agencies and non-profits to reimburse food providers for feeding kids in need. So technically, she was doing some good, at least on paper. The organization was formed back in 2016, and by 2019, it was still a pretty humble operation. Feeding Our Future wasn't known really at all.

5:41It was a small nonprofit. They had maybe two dozen food sites at the time before the pandemic, so they weren't very well known. Now, Salim Saeed, he was a different story altogether. A Somali-American entrepreneur, Said was charismatic, well-connected, and ambitious. He had a talent for building relationships and for moving money, sometimes a lot of it. Those traits helped him quickly earn trust and access within immigrant communities across Minnesota. A brief aside, because this will be important later. Minnesota has the largest Somali-American population in the U.S. Altogether, about 87 ,000 people of Somali descent live in the state.

6:35The surge in Somali immigration to Minnesota started in the 1990s after serious civil war and political instability in Somalia led people to seek brighter horizons elsewhere. Okay, now that we have that context, back to Saeed. As part of the thriving immigrant community, he owned and operated a restaurant called Safari, serving up Somali meals in Minneapolis. And safari was more than just a spot to eat. It was a local institution. Safari, though, I've been around for 20 years or so, at least. It's a big kind of community hub. A lot of politicians, not just Somali politicians, but people like Amy Klobuchar would use the restaurant for fundraisers.

7:27So, Saeed was already a bit of a mover and a shaker. And that was before he met and started working with Amy Bach and Feeding Our Future. Working together was a big change for both of them. See, before COVID hit, Bach's company worked mostly with schools to help provide meals to children whose families couldn't afford it. But when the pandemic struck and schools shut down, states scrambled to find new ways to reach students and ensure that they still had access to nutritious food. That's where organizations like Feeding Our Future and Safari Restaurant came into the picture. The pandemic brought fear, confusion, and chaos.

8:09But it also opened the floodgates to an unprecedented wave of federal funding. Federal and state entities knew that people needed help, and they went out of their way to provide access to money, food, and other resources. The USDA waived some of the requirements for participation in the federal child nutrition program. For the first time, for-profit restaurants were brought into the fold. In the name of urgency, the government swept aside its usual oversight, slashing bureaucracy to prioritize speed over scrutiny. Jonah Kaplan, an investigative reporter with WCCO, Minnesota's CBS affiliate, explains the program in more detail.

8:56This was a situation where the government has long had these programs and these plans, but the rules changed during COVID. So the Department of Agriculture has long been a sponsor of programs to help feed underprivileged kids who can't afford breakfast every morning, who can't afford lunch every day. And normally the checks and balances are in place to go visit these restaurants and to go visit these schools and to make sure that when you're making these meals and serving these meals, you're actually doing that. But at COVID, they relaxed those rules. They weren't doing site visits. They weren't doing these checks and balances.

9:45With the strict oversight requirements relaxed, Bach and Saeed were perfectly positioned to benefit from the easily accessible funds. And that's exactly what they did. So for instance, if there was like a school, you know, they have to make 100 meals a week. She would contract with a restaurant like Safari Restaurant who would make the meals, deliver them to the school. Saeed would then give the receipt to Amy Bach. Amy Bach would then submit that receipt to the government and that government would pay Amy and then Amy would pay so on and so forth. Here's Joey Peters again. feeding our future is a sponsor organization where it's basically the go-between of the federal money and the food sites below it and you know feeding our future does all the administrative work to get that money traditionally that's been like school districts are the sponsor right and the schools are the ones doing the serving the food or after school programs or YMCAs or YWCAs.

11:002020 was kind of the first time where nonprofit like Feeding Our Future was using the program in the way it was. And that's why it exploded. In 2020 and 2021, while the rest of the world was navigating the chaos of a pandemic, Bach and Saeed were writing their own playbook. They started small, Setting up food distribution sites, submitting claims for meals allegedly served, and cashing those reimbursement checks. But things quickly grew from there. They realized they had a real opportunity in front of them. Money was flowing freely. And they didn't need to jump through too many hoops to get it.

11:43So they started recruiting new distribution sites. And expanding. Saeed capitalized on his safari restaurant and its connections to other businesses and the Somali immigrant community to grow their network of distribution sites. Safari did have kind of this really large role where they're creating multiple food sites on their own and administering other food sites. As the distribution network grew, it incorporated a variety of small businesses. A lot of them were existing restaurants, like small neighborhood restaurants, just tiny ones that would have like 12 tables. And they were getting recruited into Feeding Our Future.

12:35Saeed tried to bring just about anyone he could reach on board as a business partner. And during a time when many companies were reeling from pandemic-related losses, the offer was an easy sell. All these restaurants were starting to close. Somebody would show up and say, I got a way for you to keep your restaurant open. And not only can you keep it open, you can make some money. It seemed like a win-win. Children were getting fed, community-owned restaurants were staying in business, and Bach and Saeed were getting their cut. What started as opportunism quickly turned into gluttony. They weren't just taking advantage.

13:14They were gorging themselves on government funds.

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15:30Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash opportunist. That's BetterHelp.com slash opportunist. Now, back to the story. When Amy Bach founded her nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, she couldn't have known that COVID-19 was right around the corner. But still, once it hit, it gave her the perfect opportunity to turn her non-profit into a money-making machine. There was Bach, the well-connected non-profit exec, and Salim Saeed, the fast-talking restaurant owner with a big family and even bigger ambition. Together with Bach at the top of the pyramid, the two of them expanded their operations.

16:20After all, there were so many hungry children to feed. Here's how it worked. Saeed would set up sites, like daycares or community centers. Places where families could go to get food. But here's the thing. We're not talking about a few box lunches here and there. According to the records they submitted to government officials, some of these centers were regularly feeding thousands of children every day. We're talking two, three, sometimes even 5 ,000 meals a day. Suddenly, feeding our future was everywhere. Restaurants, small daycares, residential homes. Even empty storefronts started listing themselves as meal distribution sites.

17:08And all of them claimed to serve tens of thousands of children per week. So as the pandemic lockdowns dragged on for months and months, All of that started to add up. And when they were running that many sites, serving that many meals, the amount of federal money coming in to reimburse them was staggering. Before long, millions of dollars were flowing in from the federal government. All in all, over$250 million in reimbursements were paid out. And a hefty chunk of that landed in the hands of Saeed Bak and a growing number of collaborators. By that point, Bach was determined to keep the money coming in, even if it meant inflating meal counts and inventing the names of kids who supposedly received them.

18:02So Amy Bach came up with this scheme that said, okay, let's keep going. Let's tell them about all these meals. Let's submit these receipts. Let's give them names. and on paper, let's show how much work we're doing, even though they weren't doing much work at all. They get up to the point where they're claiming to serve 6 ,000 meals a day, two times just at that restaurant, so 12 ,000 meals a day. And Bach and Saeed were getting reimbursed for a good portion of those, plus a 10 to 15 % administrative fee, you know, for their troubles. So that was a lot of money rolling in, week after week and month after month.

18:46And Bach and Saeed weren't shy about spending it. There were luxury cars, lakefront homes, commercial properties, even some international wire transfers into offshore accounts. Not exactly the lifestyle you'd expect from non-profit administrators. They thought they had a good thing going. But once the scale got too big to hide, the math wasn't mathing. And that became a problem. A small restaurant like this, they can't make 40 ,000 meals in a week. 40 ,000 people, I mean, that's twice the amount of people in the Target Center, right? That's two sellout crowds at an NBA basketball game. Here's another point of reference.

19:36According to data from the 2017 to 2018 school year, there were about 120 ,000 students in the Twin Cities area who were eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. So this one food site was claiming to feed one-third of all of the eligible students every week. While all of this was going down, Feeding Our Future submitted rosters of names to state regulators. The idea was to verify the people who were benefiting from the meal services. But it turned out that those lists of thousands upon thousands of people were just completely fabricated. They actually made up names of students. They went above and beyond to trick the government into thinking they were really doing this.

20:26And then there were some food sites that were just completely made up. People writing down that a certain suite in a strip mall that was doing nothing was serving thousands of meals a day. It turned out a lot of those were completely made up, too, as many as 250 of them. By mid-2020, the Minnesota Department of Education grew suspicious. By this point, Bach was submitting more sites, more meals, more requests than they'd ever seen. As soon as the spring of 2020, when Feed Our Future started submitting more sites and claiming more meals, They saw that and that that immediately rose suspicions and that they first tried to resolve this directly with feeding our future.

21:27The federal investigators that I spoke with basically said that eventually they started listing these receipts about how many kids were being fed. and they said, well, wait a minute, it's COVID. These kids aren't coming to school. There's no after-school programs. A small restaurant like this, they can't make 40 ,000 meals in a week. And so then they started to put the pieces together and started to look through the receipts and started to look through the submissions and started to look through the paperwork. At first, the Minnesota Department of Education tried to play nice with feeding our future.

22:09Maybe the organization had just made a mistake when they claimed to be serving tens of thousands of meals every week. While the MDE looked into the matter, they slowed down payments to feeding our future. But Bach didn't take kindly to that at all. In fact, she went on the offensive and sued the state, accusing them of racism. The other context is Amy's a white woman, and yeah, like the vast majority of food site operators were Somali or East African. Bach was white, but her colleague, Salim Saeed, and the Somali-American community he had recruited into the scheme were black. Many of them were refugees.

22:59So the idea of the state denying them food benefits was not a good look. They cited the state Human Rights Act and said, you know, they alleged discrimination because most of their food site operators were East African immigrants. It was a bold move, accusing the state of breaking the law, especially given what Bach was actually up to. And yet, it worked. they actually got some court victories along the way. There was a point in early 2021 when the state paused all funding of beating our future and a judge held them in contempt of court for doing so and basically stated that they hadn't justified their decision to stop the payment.

23:57In early 2021, a judge forced the state to resume payments. Bach got the money flowing again. Anne took advantage of the decision to line her pockets even more than before. That victory gave Bach months of runway. And then the fraud grew even bolder. So they resumed the payment at that time, and that's when they went to the FBI. And, you know, that was June of 2021. And between then and January of 2022 was when the most fraud occurred. The Minnesota Department of Education opened things up and kept the money flowing to feeding our future. But behind the scenes, though, the FBI had taken notice.

24:45They were watching. Building their case. But even with the feds on her tail, Bak and Saeed carried on. They kept the grift going and doubled down. They coached others on creating fraudulent documentation so they wouldn't have to do it all themselves. And in return, Bak and Saeed took kickbacks from participants. Basically said, hey, we can get you this kind of money, but you're going to have to give us some money too. It was a pyramid of greed. And Bach and Saeed were all the way at the top. As they brought more and more people into their scheme, Bach in particular seemed to get a bit paranoid.

25:31She cracked down on anyone she thought might blab to the press or the authorities. There was one food site operator who was apparently upset over how quickly she was getting paid. and she was going around saying stuff like feeding our future is going down. They showed a text chain where Amy and another one of her employees is referring to her and she's saying like, we're going to spook her. Our lawyer's going to call her tomorrow. You know, anybody saying this, we're going to slap them with a lawsuit, defamation lawsuit. At one point she texts like, we are becoming the mob. Bach's own words would come back to bite her.

26:15Because no empire built on hot plates and lies lasts forever. And by early 2022, the feds were ready to bust Feeding Our Future and make the gravy train come to a grinding halt.

26:32Up next, Amy Bach and Salim Saeed get busted and face the music. Hey, life doesn't happen bi-weekly, so why should Payday? The money you earn can be in your hands today with Earn It. Earning is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work, up to$150 per day with a max of$750 between paydays. Just go download the Earning app and verify your paycheck. Then access up to$150 a day as you work and leave an optional tip. Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next payday. You can use that for a spontaneous trip or that unexpected trip to the vet. Make Earning part of your financial routine and join Earning's over 4 million customers.

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28:30Head to feelthebreeze.com slash drink5. That's feelthebrez.com slash drink5 and use the code drink5 for a$5 credit plus free shipping on your first order. Now, back to the story. Eventually, Amy Bach and Salim Saeed's house of cards came crashing down. In January 2022, federal agents launched the largest law enforcement operation in Minnesota history. raiding homes and offices, seizing documents, and freezing bank accounts. The conspirators were caught red-handed. Agents uncovered bags of cash and evidence of money transfers to international accounts. The entire operation collapsed under the weight of its own greed.

29:21Bach and Saeed were arrested, along with dozens of others. And suddenly, this massive multi-million dollar meal scam was national news. There were headlines splashed across the country, late night jokes, op-eds. Everyone was asking the same question. How did they get away with it for so long? Soon, a trial would be held to get to the bottom of that very question. Amy Bach and Salim Saeed became co-defendants in the largest pandemic-era fraud case in U.S. history, facing a mountain of charges. Wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, you name it. When proceedings began, the courtroom was packed.

30:09Journalists, family members, federal agents, curious Minnesotans just trying to understand how a program meant to feed hungry kids ended up feeding the bank accounts of a handful of opportunists. The courtroom, understandably, was on high alert. In a separate trial tied to the same scheme, someone had tried to bribe a juror. Last spring was the first trial, and there was seven defendants, and on the eve of jury deliberations, somebody dropped a bag of$120 ,000 off at one of the jurors houses and the juror wasn't there at the time but she spoke to her relative and she said like there'll be more money if she votes not guilty for everybody tomorrow and when the juror found out she called the cops and went straight to the FBI.