A judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota, has overturned a guilty verdict in the case of a Somalian immigrant accused of stealing $7.2 million from taxpayers.
The case centered around Abdifatah Yusuf running a home healthcare company called Promise Health from a mailbox. He and his wife, Lul Ahmed, were later charged with stealing the money via Medicaid overbilling in the scam, KARE 11 reported Monday.
However, the outlet said, “Despite the jury swiftly convicting Yusuf, Judge Sarah West last week decided that they got it wrong, overturning the verdict and issuing a judgment of acquittal.”
The outlet continued:
Defense attorney Joe Tamburino, who is not affiliated with the case, reviewed the decision and analyzed it for KARE 11 News. He says Judge West ruled that the state’s case “relied heavily on circumstantial evidence,” and that she believed the state didn’t rule out other “reasonable inferences.”
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Despite the ruling, even Judge West wrote that she is “troubled by the manner in which fraud was able to be perpetuated at Promise Health.”
According to the Minnesota Judicial Branch website, West was elected in 2020 and her current term expires in January 2027.
In August, a jury found Yusuf guilty on six counts of aiding and abetting theft by swindle. He allegedly used the money to buy luxury cars, home furnishings, and clothes.
In a statement regarding the case, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, “Stealing money meant for poor people’s healthcare and using it to buy luxury cars and designer clothes is as shameful and disgraceful as it gets. Minnesotans believe in helping our neighbors, but we have no patience for fraudsters like Abdifatah Yusuf who abuse that generosity to enrich themselves.”
One juror said he was shocked at the judge’s decision to overturn the verdict because he and other jurors saw “obvious guilt” based on the evidence.
The attorney general’s office has since filed an appeal which is allowed because the judgement overturned the jury’s will in the case, per KARE.
Video footage shows the mailbox that was reportedly connected to Yusuf’s company:
Breitbart News has previously reported on Minnesota judges. In 2016, the outlet said, “A district court judge in Minnesota ruled this week that transgender people on Medicaid have the right to gender reassignment surgery, lifting a decade-long statewide ban on transgender surgeries for those on Medicaid.”
More recently in 2024, a Minnesota election judge was slapped with felony charges for allegedly letting people who were not registered to vote cast ballots in the 2024 election.
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