Wow -

Lou Raguse

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has reversed Hennepin County Judge Sarah West's decision to throw out the jury's guilty verdicts against Abdifatah Yusuf, owner of Promise Health, which fraudulently billed Medicaid for more than $7.2 million.

The case now returns to Hennepin County for reinstatement of all six guilty verdicts.

I broke this story last November when jurors told me they were shocked that West overturned their verdicts. Judge West concluded it was reasonable to believe that Yusuf's brother Mohamed orchestrated the fraud without Yusuf knowing or helping, and she cited Minnesota's circumstantial evidence standard as needing to rule out such a scenario for a conviction to stand.

But the appeals court says that explanation doesn't hold up when considering all the evidence together.

The judges pointed out that Yusuf registered Promise Health at an address that was actually just a mailbox, repeatedly identified himself as the company's manager, and personally signed checks to his brother, whose management role was never disclosed to the state.

And while his brother received about $359,000 from the company, Yusuf personally received more than $1 million.

The appeals court said Yusuf's claim of ignorance might have been reasonable if he operated from a legitimate office, disclosed his brother's involvement, or received less money than his brother. But none of those things happened.

The judges concluded the only reasonable inference was that Yusuf knew about the fraud and intentionally helped his brother commit it.