MINNEAPOLIS — In her career, 53-year-old Sharon Ross was so involved with food outreach in the Twin Cities, that she contacted her State Senator Sandy Pappas to help her Saint Paul nonprofit House of Refuge gain approval as a food site for children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amid red flags, the Minnesota Department of Education had already stopped approving meal sites sponsored by Feeding our Future.
But after visiting House of Refuge in Spring 2021 and seeing some meals being prepared, Senator Pappas vouched for the organization and it gained approval as 143 other applicants sat in limbo.
Ross now admits that from that point on, she scammed the federal child nutrition program out of $2.4 million-- providing money to family members and buying a house in Willernie.
The feds are seizing the home as part of Ross' guilty plea to wire fraud - as Ross is ordered to pay back the money.
The U.S. Attorney's Office has charged 60 people in the Feeding our Future scheme, which prosecutors call the largest pandemic fraud in the United States with $250 million in federal child nutrition funds stolen.
Of the 60 charged, 17 have now pleaded guilty.
That includes Sharon Ross' accomplice Hanna Marekegn who ran the Brava Cafe in Minneapolis. All told, Marekegn stole $5 million. In Ross' scheme, Marekegn claimed to provide the food that Ross claimed to serve to kids, including 300,000 alleged meals in September 2021 alone.
They admit the number is fraudulent and inflated but their schemes differed from many of the others who didn't even have a real restaurant or food shelf.
With Ross' guilty plea, the first trial for two Feeding our Future defendants is scheduled for March.
But the most notable defendant, Aimee Bock, will be in court next month trying to get her charges dismissed. Bock-- the executive director of Feeding our Future -- is accused of receiving kickbacks by signing up fraudulent meal sites. But she claims Feeding our Future simply received administrative fees and she did not profit.
Bock and 42 other defendant's cases are still pending as several of them have been granted permission to travel overseas. KARE 11 News confirmed that Liban Alishire, who has already pleaded guilty, returned from Kenya last week where he was allowed to facilitate the sale of a resort he bought with stolen meal money.
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