Sharon Denise Ross has become the 17th person to plead guilty as a result of a fraud case led by the principals of Feeding Our Future, a St. Anthony, Minnesota-based nonprofit. Ross, the executive director of another nonprofit, St. Paul-based House of Refuge Twin Cities, pleaded to one count of wire fraud. Her sentencing date has not yet been set.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, Ross’s organization received $2.4 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds from Feeding Our Future while fraudulently claiming it had served nearly 900,000 meals between September 2021 and February 2022.
House of Refuge claimed to provide meals through a network of a dozen locations throughout the Twin Cities. According to the statement from U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, Ross gave members of her family hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as spending lavishly upon herself, including purchasing a house in Willernie, Minnesota, taking vacations to Florida and Las Vegas and buying a suite at a Minnesota Timberwolves game.
In all, 60 individuals linked to Feeding Our Future, including the organization’s Founder and Executive Director Aimee Bock, have been charged with varying counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and bribery stemming from receiving or distributing $250 million in ill-gotten federal funds. Most of the other individuals charged either ran or worked for restaurants, caterers or other food supply organizations that received money from Feeding our Future. Feeding Our Future, which was founded in 2017 by Bock, does not have any documents on file with GuideStar.
Feeding Our Future received $18 million in administrative fees, as well as bribes and kickbacks from recipient organizations, according to a separate statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. Bock has pleaded not guilty, and in a February 2022 interview in Sahan Journal maintained the innocence of her and her organization’s actions. Bock’s attorney recently filed a motion seeking to get evidence seized during a search thrown out because the search warrant was allegedly based on false or misleading evidence, according to published reports.
The alleged scheme was enabled when the U.S. Department of Agriculture waived several Federal Child Nutrition Program participation restrictions during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The waived restrictions included prohibiting for-profit restaurants from participating in the program and allowing offsite food distribution to children outside of educational programs, per the U.S. Department of Justice statement.
Defendants submitted fraudulent meal count sheets, false invoices and fake attendance rosters in support of their activities, according to the U.S Department of Justice statement.
