An officer in the D.C. National Guard admitted Tuesday to an international sham marriage, false immigration documents and tens of thousands of dollars in stolen government funds to support a woman he married abroad and brought back to the U.S.
Maj. Collin L. Welch, 40, pleaded guilty to unlawfully introducing aliens to enter and remain in the U.S. and the theft of around $54,000 in government money, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, D.C. He is scheduled for sentencing in December.
As a married man, Welch was posted in 2019 to the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where he kindled a relationship with a Mongolian woman. By creating a fake divorce decree, he convinced the woman he was single and in 2022, he married her in Mongolia, federal prosecutors said.
In 2024, Welch brought the woman and her minor daughter to the U.S. on tourist visas and in October of that year, he married the woman for a second time in Virginia, according to the attorney’s office. Welch was still legally married to his initial wife at each of his subsequent nuptials.
When his guests’ tourist visas expired in early 2025, Welch continued to house and financially support them and he, once again, took to fabricating documents, creating permanent residency approvals, Social Security cards and a letter showing military health benefits for dependents, the office said. He never filed any paperwork with any government agency.
To fund the travel and living expenses of his new bride and her daughter, Welch racked up tens of thousands of dollars on his government travel card, creating fraudulent travel vouchers using fake hotel and rental card receipts.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, with help from the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Criminal Investigations Unit.
Welch, who is from Arlington, Virginia, previously served in the Alaska and D.C. National Guard, and he deployed to Afghanistan and Djibouti.
The D.C. National Guard has not responded to a request for comment.
Eve Sampson is a reporter and former Army officer. She has covered conflict across the world, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.