Minnesota appeals court reinstates guilty verdict in $7.2 million fraud case

Jeff Day, Star Tribune on Oct 26, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Court of Appeals has reinstated a jury’s guilty verdict in a $7.2 million Medicaid fraud case after a Hennepin County judge threw out the conviction last year before sentencing.

In a unanimous decision, three appellate court judges found there was sufficient evidence to convict Abdifatah Yusuf of six counts of aiding-and-abetting theft by swindle in a fraud that was orchestrated by his brother, Mohamed.

Last year, a jury convicted Yusuf on those same counts, but his attorneys convincingly argued after the convictions that Mohamed had hidden the fraud from Yusuf and that Yusuf was innocent of the charges. Hennepin County District Court Judge Sarah West agreed and acquitted Yusuf of all the charges against him, overturning the jury’s conviction.

A three-judge Court of Appeals panel examined the evidence presented at trial and disagreed that West had sufficient grounds to overturn the jury’s verdict.

Yusuf owned Promise Health Services, a Medicaid provider, and was charged in 2024 by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office with falsely claiming to provide home and community-based services such as cooking, cleaning and grocery services.

Instead, the company had allegedly served as a “sham entity” that operated out of a mailbox alongside several other health care companies like All Nations, Open Arms, Saam Healthcare and Life Health Services, several of which were owned by Yusuf’s family members, including his brother.

Investigators with the state’s Medicaid Fraud Unit testified that Promise had fraudulently received more than $7.2 million and that $1 million had personally gone to Yusuf’s bank account where he withdrew more than $387,000 in cash.

In total, $400,000 was spent on retail purchases and investigators showed that Yusuf and his wife spent more than $80,000 at clothing stores such as Coach, Canada Goose, Michael Kors, Nike and Nordstrom.

More than $2.5 million went to individuals who had not undergone background checks, including $268,000 in “peer-to-peer” transactions and $361,000 to “outside entities with no identified business purpose.” Mohamed was paid $359,000.

After the jury returned a conviction on all six counts of aiding-and-abetting theft by swindle, Attorney General Keith Ellison said, “Stealing money meant for poor people’s health care and using it to buy luxury cars and designer clothes is as shameful and disgraceful as it gets.”

But, before sentencing, Yusuf’s attorneys presented a written argument that Yusuf was innocent of the charges and the scheme had been carried out by his brother without his knowledge. West agreed, ruling that circumstantial evidence showed Mohamed was carrying out the fraud without “Yusuf’s knowledge or assistance.”

The Court of Appeals used what is known as a “circumstantial-evidence test” to determine if West had the legal grounds to overturn the jury’s guilty verdict and found she did not.

The opinion was written by Judge Renee Worke and considered alongside Judges Rachel Bond and Jeanne Cochran.

Because Mohamed had committed theft by swindle, all Yusuf had to be found guilty of was aiding, advising, hiring, counseling or conspiring with his brother to commit the fraud.

The evidence showed that Yusuf was “not operating a legitimate provider agency” and was working out of a mailbox. He also represented himself as an owner and operator of Promise and set up the company’s payroll and wrote checks using its business account. He received $1 million from those accounts and never disclosed Mohamed’s role in the company to the state of Minnesota.

“Yusuf knew that fraudulent billing was occurring and he intentionally aided Mohamed’s commission of that crime,” Worke wrote.

The argument that Yusuf was innocent because Mohamed concealed the fraud from him also was not convincing to the appellate court.

“This hypothesis of innocence might otherwise be reasonable had Yusuf operated Promise out of a physical location, disclosed Mohamed’s role within Promise, or benefited to a lesser degree than Mohamed,” Worke wrote. “But that is not the case.”

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