Witnesses testify about Aimee Bock using their names, businesses in alleged food fraud without them knowing

MINNEAPOLIS — With a chuckle from the witness stand that brought smiles and stifled laughter from members of the jury, Jamie Phelps, a 49-year-old mechanic from Eagan bluntly testified about the absurdity of his position.

An off-handed conversation around his neighbor’s bonfire over beers several years ago unwittingly landed him as treasurer of the board of directors for Feeding our Future, the nonprofit at the center of a $250 million pandemic meal fraud case.

Aimee Bock, Feeding our Future’s former executive director currently standing trial, was dating Phelps’ neighbor. She told Phelps how she was planning to start a nonprofit and needed to form a board.

“Sure,” Phelps told her, wanting to help but knowing nothing more about her plans.

What Phelps didn’t realize and was never told is that Bock went forward with that plan, naming Phelps treasurer, and submitting various documents to the state with Phelps’ forged signature, claiming he volunteered up to five hours a week and approved Feeding our Future’s budgets.

“Would you be well-suited to be the non-profit’s treasurer?,” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Bobier.

“I’m going to say no because I wouldn’t know what I’d be doing,” Phelps said. “I would be a fish out of water.”

“Do you know what company you were named treasurer?” Bobier asked.

“Feeding our Friends, I guess. I don’t know exactly,” Phelps answered.

And he added that he felt used by Bock.

“Pretty angry. Pretty upset. Why? Because I am in federal court for something I know nothing about,” Phelps testified.

Phelps’ testimony in many ways mirrored that of Ben Stayberg, a Saint Paul bartender who was unknowingly registered as president of Feeding our Future’s board of directors. Phelps testified that he knows Stayberg from the bar.

“Ben’s a great guy, but I don’t think I’d want him to be president of anything of mine. It’s not his background,” Phelps testified. 

While not directly related to the fraud charges Bock faces, prosecutors appear to be using the haphazard and illegitimate formation of her nonprofit as evidence that much of Feeding our Future’s existence revolves around fraud.

Earlier, Saint Paul boxing gym owner Cerresso Fort testified about how Bock used his gym as a purported meal site without his permission or knowledge.

Fort testified that he knew a small number of free meals were being served in the building where his business, SIR Boxing, was located in 2021 on Arcade Street in Saint Paul. The children he trained in the morning would go upstairs to collect a free lunch.

But Fort said he had no idea Bock registered his business by name as a meal site sponsored by and run by Feeding our Future, claiming to serve 2500 meals a day, and collecting $1.8 million in reimbursement funds.

“It is very awful. It’s sickening. Someone like what I’m doing in the community for the kids, you never want it to be tarnished or looked at like it anything other than what it is,” Fort said.

In cross-examination regarding the boxing gym, Aimee Bock’s lawyer insinuated that there might have been another meal site on Arcade Street. But the paperwork shown in court seemed to show Bock at some point simply removed the name of the business SIR boxing. 

There wasn’t much of any cross-examination of Jamie Phelps, the Feeding our Future former board treasurer.