An American foreign service officer was arrested in the nation’s capital Monday on charges of plotting to sell visas at the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania for more than $40,000, federal prosecutors in Chicago said.
Matthew Christ, 41, of Alexandria, Va., was arrested on charges contained in a 19-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Chicago on March 24 and unsealed Monday, prosecutors said.
He was released on bond by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., pending further court action in Chicago, prosecutors said. According to the indictment, an unnamed co-conspirator in Chicago wired money to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, where one of the 10 defendants charged in the case, Darius Reika, 28, would buy the visas from Christ for $3,000 to $14,000 apiece.
The sales took place between August 1999 and July 2001 while Christ was posted to the embassy, prosecutors said.
