Breaking news … Two councilmembers charged with election fraud

Mohammed Hassan

By Charles Sercombe
After a couple of years of speculation and investigation, two Hamtramck city councilmembers were charged Monday (Aug. 10), with felony election fraud and ballot harvesting in the city council race of 2023.
Councilmember Mohammed Hassan, 57, faces three felony charges:
• Count 1: Forging a signature on an absentee ballot application
• Count 2: Election law forgery
Count 3: False statement on an absentee ballot application
Councilmember Muhtasin Sadman, 26,who is in his first term, faces the following charges:
• Count 1: Forging signature on an absentee ballot application
Count 2: Election law forgery
Count 3: Unqualified elector attempting to vote
Count 4: Unqualified elector attempting to vote
Count 5: False statement in an application for absentee ballot
Several of the charges carry a maximum of five years in prison.
Charges were filed Monday morning in Hamtramck 31st District Court, and the matter is being handled by the Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office.

Muhtasin Sadman

Hassan and Sadman had separate arraignments on Tuesday in Hamtramck 31st District Court, where personal bonds were set at $7,500 for Hassan and $2,500 for Sadman.
Their preliminary examinations are scheduled for Aug. 28.
Both were told to surrender their passports.
Reached by phone, Councilmember Sadman, who is a real estate agent, at first said he would not comment, but then added:
“The charges are made up to make the Bangladesh and Muslim communities to look bad.”
Councilmember Hassan, who works for Ford and has been in office for 16 years, could not be reached for comment, but he has denied the accusation in the past. Hassan told the Detroit News that the charges were “… just political games. That is all. Political games.”
Arrest warrants were signed Monday morning by Hamtramck 31st District Court Judge Alexis Krot.
The Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office got involved after state Attorney General Dana Nessel decided to bow out from handling the case (upon conducting an investigation),and asked for a special prosecutor in the state to take the case.
There are those in the state that speculated the matter had become a political hot potato for Nessel, who reportedly has higher political ambitions after she is termed out this year.
According to the state attorney general’s petition for a special prosecutor, the suspects all face accusations that they “conspired to receive unvoted absentee ballots that had been signed by recently naturalized citizens, and to then fill in the candidates of their choosing.”
“In some instances, it is alleged that they paid for votes, as well as had citizens claim addresses they did not live at, in order to gain an advantage in local elections.”
The election in 2023 was notable for a curious reason.
In the August primary election, Nayeem Choudhury was the top vote-getter but, in the November election, he fell to fifth place out of a field of six candidates – an unheard-of drop-off for a top contender.
And Sadman, an obscure newcomer to politics, rose from fifth place in the primary election to the number two spot in the November election.
Hassan rose from fourth place — right behind Lynn Blasey, the only female in the election — to go on to become the top-vote getter in November’s election.
Hassan’s and Sadman’s sudden rises in the November election squeezed Blasey out from a seat on council.
Choudhury also claimed that, in the November 2023 election, 200 absentee ballots had not been counted.
Asked why he made this claim, Choudhury told The Review at the time:
“I don’t know, the whole community is shocked and saddened that they voted for me by absentee ballots — over a thousand. They don’t know why I lost against a candidate that came in fifth place in the primary.”
The case initially took a slow path forward after agents in the Attorney General’s Office began their investigation following the 2023 election – an investigation which included interviews with witnesses.
It seemed the case was going nowhere until a couple of months ago, when Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj wrote a letter to the state Attorney General urging her to make a decision on whether to go forward.
Faraj said there are surveillance recordings, from security cameras on city hall, showing one or more candidates stuffing a ballot drop-off box in front of city hall with ballots.
Faraj has also said that a number of ballots had the same handwriting.
According to sources, there is plenty of evidence gathered from surveillance footage, witnesses and other sources.
Also, according to sources, there are likely to be more people and councilmembers facing charges in the coming days and weeks.
There is also speculation that there was ballot harvesting in the latest primary election here in Hamtramck.
The Review reached out to Mayor Amer Ghalib, who has repeatedly accused former city administrations of corruption, for comment on the election charges but, as usual, he did not respond.
Former Mayor Karen Majewski, however, has been interviewed by local news outlets about the matter. Majewski told The Review:
“The only thing surprising about these charges for the residents of Hamtramck is that they’ve actually been filed. Most of us have known about these issues for well over 10 years. And, despite the evidence and the outcry, we’d come to despair that any action would be taken by legal authorities to guarantee the integrity of our elections.”
Majewski continued: “The commonly held belief that elections here are decided through fraud undermines our system in so many ways–not just by unfairly seating people in public office, but by convincing honest people that it’s pointless to run for office, and by discouraging voters from participating in the process at all. That holds true whether we’re talking about Hamtramck or the whole nation. And when we are convinced that elections don’t matter because the cheaters face no consequences, our entire system breaks down. That’s why holding people accountable — as evidenced in these charges — is so important.”
Updated and Posted Aug. 15, 2025