A Minneapolis café owner testified Tuesday that Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock demanded $1.5 million in cash in a 2021 meeting to approve a fraudulent invoice totaling $3.1 million — and the Ethiopian immigrant said Bock terminated her contract when she refused to cooperate.

It was the first time a witness in this month’s Feeding Our Future trial has directly accused Bock of soliciting a bribe. Bock has been accused by prosecutors of organizing a pay-for-play scheme in which dozens of alleged conspirators stole $250 million by pretending to feed thousands of low-income children each day across Minnesota — one of the country’s largest pandemic-related fraud schemes.

The monthlong trial of Bock and Salim Said, who owned a Minneapolis restaurant, is the second trial to take place in the massive fraud case since charges were filed in 2022.

Hanna Marekegn, who owned Brava Café in Minneapolis, was one of the first defendants to plead guilty in the sprawling case in October 2022. Marekegn admitted then that her business received $7.1 million in federal money after falsely claiming to serve more than 4,000 meals a day during the pandemic.

In her plea deal, Marekegn admitted paying $150,000 in bribes to one of Bock’s top administrators, Abdikerm Eidleh, who recruited new food distribution sites for the fast-growing nonprofit in 2020 but fled the country in late 2021. Other witnesses have described Eidleh as their main contact at Feeding Our Future, someone who showed them how to defraud the government by inflating their meal counts and submitting invoices for food that was never purchased.

Jurors also heard Tuesday from a Feeding Our Future employee who testified that Bock didn’t seem interested when she and her mother — who also worked at the nonprofit — raised questions about its practices.

Like other defendants who have testified against Bock, Marekegn broke into tears on the witness stand, saying she regrets her role in a scam that exploited the needs of vulnerable children and has damaged the local East African community.

“I was bad. This is more than greed, you know,“ testified Marekegn, who has yet to be sentenced for pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. ”This was wrong.”

Marekegn said her 13-seat café on East Hennepin Avenue was in financial straits in September 2020, when she was first introduced to Eidleh. Brava never attracted more than five or 10 customers a day, and even that business dried up when the pandemic hit that year, Marekegn testified.

Despite seeing that Marekegn had no employees and a small kitchen, Eidleh suggested she promise to serve about 5,000 meals per day, Marekegn testified. She balked, but agreed to claim 4,000 meals per day even though she knew she wasn’t capable of delivering that many meals, she testified.

She said Eidleh demanded a 5% cut of her reimbursement checks as payment for his help, which ranged from $17,000 per month in late 2020 to $39,461 a month in 2021. Eidleh covered his tracks by pretending the payments were for supplies or consulting services, Marekegn testified, but she said he never provided any legitimate services.

She said Eidleh threatened to cancel her contract if she didn’t pay the kickbacks.

“He said he was the consultant, and I have to pay him,” Marekegn testified.

Marekegn said she was stunned when six-figure checks started rolling in every month from her inflated meal claims. She said Feeding Our Future employees persuaded her that what she and other site operators were doing was not illegal.

“We knew everything was wrong but we kept doing it because we needed the money,” Marekegn testified. “We come to this country for a better life and this was way different. Something we never seen ... Everyone said COVID fraud is not fraud.”

Marekegn testified that she told Bock about the kickbacks in 2021, when she wanted to stop the illegal payments to Eidleh.

“She says keep doing what you and Eidleh agreed,” Marekegn testified. “She didn’t want to know the details.”

Marekegn said her profits spiked in 2021, after she became a vendor to two other sites overseen by Feeding Our Future. But she said the numbers got so big that she could no longer come up with enough invoices to cover her tracks, which led to a confrontation with Bock in August 2021.

The breaking point, Marekegn testified, was an invoice she submitted for $3.1 million, which covered her alleged meal deliveries for July 2021. Though other site operators typically charged less than $10 for meals, Brava sought $38.50 per meal, claiming each meal represented a week’s worth of dry food given out to needy families.

For the first time, Marekegn testified, Bock questioned one of her bills, saying she didn’t have the capacity to serve that much food or the invoices to back up her purchases. Marekegn said she knew the claim was grossly inflated, but she defended it anyway because she wanted the money.

Marekegn testified that Bock asked to meet her at a Minneapolis coffee shop and told her to leave her cell phone and Apple watch in the car, possibly to keep her from secretly recording the meeting.

“She was very straightforward,” Marekegn testified. “She say it was my choice to do this work or not. She wanted half the money.”

Marekegn said she refused to pay the bribe, which she claimed Bock wanted in cash.

“I cannot come up with a million and a half in cash,” Marekegn testified.

The following month, Bock terminated Marekegn’s contract. Bock and Marekegn later submitted complaints to the Minnesota Department of Education about each other. The department distributes the federal funding to reimburse schools and nonprofits for feeding children after school and during the summer.

On cross examination, Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, asked if the reason Bock asked Marekegn to leave her phone and watch in the car was because “Miss Bock did not trust you as a person.”

“Yes, sir,” Marekegn said.

When Udoibok asked her what she did with the money, Marekegn said: “Live the American dream.”

Marekegn could be sentenced between 37 and 46 months in prison. She must also forfeit a $150,000 condo in Edina that prosecutors tied to the fraud.

Genesis Alonso, who worked as food program coordinator at Feeding Our Future from June 2020 to December 2021, told jurors that she brought questionable invoices and other documents to Bock when she failed to get answers from site operators or her co-workers at Feeding Our Future.

One of the most troubling things she spotted, Alonso testified, was the same invoice number showing up repeatedly on different invoices, an indicator of possible fraud. Despite her concerns, Alonso said, most of those claims were eventually paid.

On cross examination, Alonso admitted that she doesn’t know if Bock conducted any investigation to substantiate or disprove her concerns.

Alonso also suggested that her mother’s signature had been forged on a document Bock submitted as part of a $9,000 bank loan. In the 2018 letter, her mother, Norma Cabadas, supposedly offered Bock the job of running Feeding Our Future, a job that then paid $85,000 a year.

“That’s not her signature,” testified Alonso, noting she and her unemployed mother were living in poverty in Texas at the time.

Of the 70 people charged in the Feeding Our Future case, 35 have pleaded guilty and five were convicted by a jury last year while two were acquitted.

The latest defendant, Najmo Ahmed, 35, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty Monday. She and her husband, Said Ereg, ran Evergreen Grocery and Deli, which received more than $4.2 million from Feeding Our Future. Instead of buying food for children, prosecutors said, she spent money on items from Burberry, Louis Vuitton and other luxury stores.

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