After a three-day sentencing trial by jury, a Carrollton man was sentenced on December 13 to four years in prison and 10 years of probation for an election fraud scheme.
Zul Mirza Mohamed, 43, pleaded guilty to 109 counts of mail ballot fraud in connection with the 2020 mayoral election in Carrollton, where he was a candidate for office.
Mohamed allegedly submitted dozens of fraudulent applications for mail-in ballots to the Denton County Elections Office, using the names of actual, registered voters and forging their signatures on the documents to cast fraudulent votes for himself.
An alert worker at the office noticed a number of suspiciously similar applications and called them to the attention of a supervisor, who notified law enforcement. All applications had the same return mail address at a commercial mailbox store in Lewisville.
The Denton County Sheriff’s Office set up a sting operation to catch Mohamed. They used a tracker device hidden in a box of ballots and staked out the store to watch for his arrival. An undercover agent posed as an employee at the store. Mohammed was caught on surveillance camera picking up the ballots, and officers followed him to his home in Carrollton, where they executed a search warrant for the property.
During the search, officers found the Denton County ballots, the fake IDs used to rent the mailbox, the lease information for a second mailbox in Plano, and stacks of ballot applications addressed to Dallas County Elections. Carrollton encompasses part of three counties: Dallas, Denton, and Collin, but it is unclear whether any ballots from Dallas and Collin County were cast fraudulently.
During the sentencing trial, Dr. Kristi Compton, a forensic psychologist who had evaluated Mohamed, testified that the defendant suffered from a delusional disorder with grandiose ideas which led him to believe that stealing votes in the election was justified because of his “special gifts,” as Texas Scorecard reported.
Although he could have faced up to 20 years in prison, the jury chose a lesser sentence of four years with 10 years probation.
One of the jurors, Shannon Napier, told Texas Scorecard that “it became quite obvious that [Mohamed] has some kind of mental illness.” She said the jury’s decision was intended to set a precedent to show the seriousness of the voter fraud charges and to force the defendant to get help for his mental condition.
Napier added that hearing the elections administrator testify about the process of vetting ballot applications gave her “way more confidence” in Denton county elections.
“Today is a big day for election integrity in Denton County,” Denton County Judge Andy Eads said, per the Carrollton Leader. “I am so proud of the Denton County jury that stood up for election integrity. … “I am proud of our Denton County Elections Administration for catching the attempted fraud, for sheriff Tracy Murphree and his team for thoroughly investigating the crime and bringing Mohamed to justice, and for our dedicated prosecutors for bringing it to the finish line.”