As prosecutors celebrate the conviction of former Feeding Our Future director Aimee Bock as a victory for accountability, the effort to recover taxpayer money lost to the fraud continues.

Investigators revealed Wednesday that they have clawed back about $60 million of the nearly $250 million stolen from the Federal Child Nutrition Program in 2020 and 2021.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned about half of the money recovered is cash seized from bank accounts, but the remainder is tied up in property including vehicles and real estate spread across the country and the world.

That includes a nearly 6,000-square-foot house in Plymouth, which Bock’s co-defendant, Salim Said, purchased for $1.1 million using federal food money.

RELATED: Said describes serving thousands of meals daily from Safari Restaurant; prosecution questions his ties to fraud

Erica MacDonald, former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, says the task of identifying and recovering the proceeds of fraud belongs to a team known as the Financial Litigation Unit (FLU).

“It is a set of individuals who use all the tools at their disposal to find every asset they can,” MacDonald said. “And I can tell you, I’ve worked with these folks in the US Attorney’s office here in Minnesota and they are tenacious. They use all the tools that they’re available.”

Yet even as those efforts continue, investigators acknowledge it will be difficult to recover every dollar due to the depreciation of vehicles and other property seized as well as money that disappeared with co-conspirators who have fled the country.

“There are a variety of reasons why that money, even though it went out, isn’t going to all come back in,” MacDonald said. “I think the most important thing for the public to take away from that is that is why we need strong controls in place to make sure it doesn’t happen in the first place.”

Additional Feeding Our Future defendants are still scheduled to go on trial later this year.