US diplomat, Guyanese held in large-scale visa fraud Chicago Tribune March 21, 2000 A US diplomat and another man have been charged and more than $500,000 and ten gold bars seized in what federal officials in Chicago described yesterday as a scheme to sell visas to enter the United States. Thomas P. Carroll, 32, of Chicago and Halim Khan, 36, of Georgetown, Guyana, were arrested on Friday on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and visa fraud, federal prosecutors said. The US attorney's office in Chicago said that it has seized $535,000 and the ten gold bars from safe deposit boxes controlled by Carroll in the Chicago area. It said that officials are trying to freeze an additional $535,000 in assets controlled by the two men. Federal prosecutors said that Carroll, a State Department Foreign Service officer, was picked up Friday night at the home of his parents in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hills. Khan was arrested Friday in Miami as he tried to board a plane for Guyana. Prosecutors did not say how many visas had been sold by the two men. But they said that at the time of their arrests they were planning to sell an additional 250 visas for at least $1 million in bribes. Authorities said that the investigation began in June 1999 when they were tipped by confidential sources that someone had offered to sell visas out of the US Embassy in Georgetown to enter this country. For 12 months starting in March 1998, Carroll was the officer in the embassy in charge of issuing visas to Guyanese and other foreign nationals. In March 1999, he became economic and commercial officer at the embassy and, as such, was no longer in charge of visas. Federal officials said that in February, Carroll asked another embassy employee to approve visas in exchange for money. Criminal complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago alleged that Carroll at one point offered to pay the embassy employee $4,000 for every future visa he approved. The two engaged in a number of conversations, many of which were recorded, authorities said. They said the other embassy employee is cooperating in the probe.