Prosecutors on Tuesday called two witnesses in the trial of Aimee Bock, the founder and former executive director of Feeding Our Future. One woman testified that she paid an associate of Bock $30,000 a month for the nonprofit’s sponsorship in a federal program to provide meals to children during the pandemic.

Lul Ali, 58, owned and operated a small Somali restaurant in Faribault that ran a food distribution site under Feeding Our Future.

Ali, through tears, told jurors how she falsely claimed to serve a thousand kids per day at the direction of Bock. Ali says she agreed to “tell the truth” as part of a plea agreement in hopes of a reduced prison sentence.

Ali’s husband, Mohammed Hussein, operated an organization called Somali American Faribault Education.

Ali says Bock later pressured them to open additional sites.

“More facilities, more money. The American dream,” she said Bock told her.

As part of her guilty plea, Ali admitted that Lido Restaurant falsely claimed to serve more than 700,000 meals to children from June 2020 through April 2021, for which the company received more than $2.9 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.

Altogether, Ali and Hussein got around $5 million from Feeding Our Future, she told jurors. They are among the dozens of mostly Somali people who have pleaded guilty in the investigation.

“[Bock] destroyed us as a community,” Ali added.

Earlier Tuesday, prosecutors questioned Benjamin Stayberg, a local bartender once listed as president of the Feeding Our Future board.

But Stayberg told jurors he did not know about his connection to the nonprofit until a reporter from the New York Times called him and he later received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“I had no idea I was any part of that,” Stayberg said from the witness stand.

Stayberg was shown minutes from several Feeding Our Future Board meetings that included his signature, but Stayberg told jurors he had never even been to a meeting and had no experience with “food sourcing,” as explained in Feeding Our Future records.

“No,” Stayberg said. “I serve drinks.”

You can find KSTP’s full coverage of the Feeding Our Future investigation here.