American law enforcement reached across the globe on June 25, 2026, to arrest one of the most wanted fugitives in the history of federal fraud prosecution. Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, a former employee of the now-infamous Feeding Our Future nonprofit and one of the top orchestrators of what prosecutors have called the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, was taken into custody in Mogadishu, Somalia, by that country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency working in coordination with the FBI.
The arrest, announced publicly the following day by U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen of the District of Minnesota brought to a close more than four years of fugitive status for Eidleh, who had been indicted in September 2022 on 31 counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, federal programs bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and money laundering.
Eidleh had allegedly already fled to Africa before federal investigators conducted their first raids of Feeding Our Future-connected properties in early 2022, and FBI agents had spoken to him on the phone at that time before losing contact permanently.
FBI Director Kash Patel did not mince words in his statement on the arrest. “Abdikerm Eidleh was an alleged ringleader of one of the largest fraud scandals in the history of the country,” Patel said, “orchestrating a massive $250 million scheme to steal critical food resources from vulnerable Americans who needed it and spent the money on luxury cars and mansions, as shameless as it gets.” Patel credited the FBI’s international partnerships and called the operation that netted Eidleh in Somalia a “brilliant op.”
The Feeding Our Future fraud scheme exploited emergency regulatory changes that the federal government made to the Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to ensure that children who relied on school meals for daily nutrition could continue to be fed during pandemic school closures, the U.S. Department of Agriculture waived standard requirements for participation in the program, including rules that had previously prevented for-profit restaurants from participating and rules limiting food distribution to school settings.
Those waivers, intended as emergency measures to protect vulnerable children, became the gateway for a massive criminal enterprise.
Feeding Our Future was a Minnesota-based nonprofit that served as a “sponsor” organization under the Child Nutrition Program, authorized to supervise and vouch for meal sites operating under its umbrella. In that capacity, the organization went from receiving and disbursing approximately $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021, an increase of roughly 5,800 percent in two years.
According to the Justice Department, the scheme operated as a “pay-to-play” pipeline. Eidleh and other Feeding Our Future employees recruited individuals to open fake meal distribution sites. Those site operators would then claim to be feeding thousands of children per day and invoice the federal government for millions of meals that were never actually served.
In exchange for their inclusion in the scheme and approval of their fraudulent claims, the operators kicked back a portion of the stolen money to Eidleh and other insiders, typically in payments disguised as consulting fees routed through shell companies.
Eidleh’s individual take from the scheme was staggering. According to the indictment, he deposited more than $5 million in kickbacks, bribes, and other fraud proceeds into accounts associated with his shell companies.
Among the transactions prosecutors traced was a $95,000 mortgage payment. The federal indictment accuses him of creating his own fake Child Nutrition Program sites under the names of stand-in owners, falsely claiming those sites were serving thousands of children per day, and creating sham vendor companies that billed the government for food that was never delivered.
The overall scale of the Feeding Our Future fraud, as proven at trial and in subsequent proceedings, is almost incomprehensible. Prosecutors say the scheme fraudulently claimed to have served 91 million meals to children, for which approximately $250 million in federal funds was diverted. That money did not feed hungry children during a national emergency. Instead, it funded luxury vehicles, real estate acquisitions, lavish travel, and the trappings of wealth for a network of criminals who treated a children’s nutrition program as their personal piggy bank.
The mastermind at the top of the organization was Aimee Bock, 45, founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future. Bock was convicted after a five-week trial on seven counts of wire fraud and bribery. She was sentenced on May 22, 2026, to 500 months in federal prison, nearly 42 years, and ordered to pay $243 million in restitution. The federal judge’s sentencing remarks and the Justice Department’s characterization of her conduct left no ambiguity: she was, as prosecutors put it, the unquestioned mastermind of what the Justice Department called “the single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.”
Eidleh is described by prosecutors as Bock’s second-in-command, a characterization that Bock herself leaned into during her own trial. Facing conviction, Bock repeatedly deflected blame to Eidleh during three days of testimony, arguing that she had been taken advantage of by employees who operated the scheme beneath her.
Federal prosecutors dismissed that defense as false, and the jury agreed, convicting her on all counts. With Bock now serving her sentence and Eidleh in custody, the two central figures in the scheme are finally facing American justice.
