The FBI is on the hunt for a former University of Michigan student from China who allegedly voted illegally in the 2024 presidential election, then fled the country one day before Donald Trump took office, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.
The fugitive, Haoxiang Gao, now faces federal charges for allegedly voting illegally, and fleeing the country to avoid prosecution. According to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, he was already facing state charges for voting illegally and was released on a $5,000 personal bond last fall with conditions: He had to surrender his passport and not leave the state.
While Gao did surrender his passport, the complaint states, he jumped bond on Jan. 19 and fled the country on a Delta flight to Shanghai, China. According to Customs and Border Protection records, he passed through Detroit Metro Airport security using a passport that was in his name, but bore a different number than the one on the passport he initially surrendered to police.
He is now facing federal charges of filing false claims to register to vote, unlawfully voting as an undocumented immigrant, and fleeing to avoid prosecution.
“I hope that today’s charges send a message to foreign nationals — including those who are students at our universities — that we will not tolerate illegal voting,” U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said in a statement Tuesday, in which he expressed particular concern over the defendant’s nationality.
“Illegal voting is a serious crime that casts doubt on our elections and serves to disenfranchise United States citizens by diluting their power at the ballot box. But illegal voting by a foreign national who is from a country controlled by a communist party dictatorship — with no modern history or tradition of democratic government — is beyond the pale,” Gorgon states.
He ‘was freaking out … tried to make things right’
According to the criminal complaint, here is how Gao fell on the FBI’s radar after the 2024 presidential election:
In October 2024, Gao was living in room 4515 at a student dormitory on Observatory Street when he cast an early ballot in the 2024 presidential election. At the time, he held a Green Card, a Florida driver’s license and a Social Security number.
More: Criminal charges filed after noncitizen allegedly voted in Michigan
On Oct. 28, U-M Public Safety & Security received information from the Ann Arbor Clerk’s Office that a Chinese national may have cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential election. The Clerk’s Office stated that in the late afternoon of Oct. 27 an unidentified male caller contacted the office and asked whether voting with a green card at the polling place across the street from the U-M Student Union building was OK. The Clerk’s Office representative said that only U.S. citizens can vote, and that green card holders cannot.
Before the caller got off the phone, the Clerk’s Office representative took a photograph of the caller’s telephone number, which was the same number that Gao had listed on his fraudulent state of Michigan Voter Registration Application.
Gao then called the Clerk’s Office a second time, identified himself and “admitted that he cast a fraudulent vote. GAO asked if he could ‘pull back his vote,’ ” the complaint states.
“(He) stated he was ‘freaking out because I wasn’t supposed to vote,’ before concluding the call,” the complaint states.
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“GAO claimed that he later tried to ‘make things right’ by contacting the city of Ann Arbor and the Washtenaw County Clerk’s Office,” the complaint states.
Charges, however, followed.
Student posted to Chinese app that he voted in US election
According to the complaint, police matched Gao’s scribbled signature on his voter registration application to his Florida driver’s license. They also interviewed his roommate, who told police that “Gao had talked about going to vote in the 2024 Presidential Election on October 27, 2024, during a bus ride to the University of Michigan Union” before he actually voted. The roommate also told police that after Gao voted, he posted “a message that he voted in the 2024 Presidential Election on a Chinese application, WeChat, from his cell phone.”
Gao, however, did not disclose these details to police, the complaint states.
Criminal charges followed.
On Nov. 8, Gao turned himself in via Zoom and was arraigned in 14A District Court in Ann Arbor on felony charges of lying to register to vote and being unqualified to try to vote. He was released on bond and ordered to return to court on Jan. 17 for a probable cause hearing, which was pushed to March 5.
Gao, however, was gone by then.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, on Jan. 19, Gao boarded Delta Flight No. 389 bound for Shanghai at Detroit Metro Airport using a second passport he had obtained.
He has not been seen since.
An attorney of record has not been listed for Gao. His whereabouts are unknown.
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Feds charge University of Michigan Chinese student with illegal voting
