SHE SHOULD BE FIRED!! The Minnesota Court of Appeals has reversed Hennepin County Judge Sarah West and reinstated all six guilty verdicts against Abdifatah Abdulkadir Yusuf for a $7.2 million Medicaid fraud scheme. ⠀ A Hennepin County jury convicted Yusuf in August 2025 on six counts of aiding and abetting theft by swindle after a seven-day trial. Prosecutors showed that Promise Health Services submitted more than 40,000 fraudulent claims between 2019 and 2022, operated for years out of a mailbox with no physical office, and funneled over $1 million into Yusuf’s personal accounts while he and his wife spent tens of thousands on luxury clothing, furniture, and vehicles. ⠀ West threw out the unanimous jury verdicts in November 2025 before sentencing. She ruled that the largely circumstantial evidence failed to eliminate a reasonable possibility that Yusuf’s brother Mohamed had run the fraud without his knowledge or help. ⠀ On October 26 2026 a unanimous three-judge appeals panel reversed her. The court held that the evidence did not support any reasonable alternative explanation and that Yusuf knew of and intentionally aided the fraud. ⠀ The case returns to district court for sentencing, where aggravating factors found by the jury remain in play. West was appointed by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton in 2018. ⠀ Her decision to nullify a jury’s finding of guilt in a multi-million-dollar fraud case against a Medicaid provider, only to be unanimously overturned months later, raises questions about whether the ruling reflected the evidence or a preference for a different outcome. ⠀ #Minnesota #MedicaidFraud