Family members of Oregon native Troy Bachmann say he’s being held in a Mexican prison on false charges and has been there for months. They are seeking help from the government and the industry to help Troy out of prison.
The 48-year-old businessman lived in Jalisco, Mexico, for the last two decades. He built up four different companies including, Fancy Fresh Farms, specialized in Mexican produce as he works with local growers and workers in the region.
Since May 19, 2015, Bachmann has been locked up in Mexico’s prison approximately 500 miles northwest of Mexico City. The problem for Bachmann began, Derek believes, when he hired a new bookkeeper for Fancy Fresh Farms and started noticing discrepancies in the accounting. Derek said last spring Troy discovered a bookkeeper and four other employees had embezzled nearly $180,000 while he was off marketing the business. An independent audit confirmed his suspicions, but he didn’t have time to deal with it before leaving on a business trip.
While he was gone, the bookkeeper and several other employees raided the company’s checking accounts, wiped his computer hard drives clean and planted rumors with Bachmann’s growers that he was planning to leave the country without paying them. When Bachmann agreed to meet with some of them to straighten out the misunderstanding, he was surrounded by police and arrested on the spot. "No warrant. No explanation. No reading him his rights. He was simply handcuffed and hauled away."
For eight days Bachmann’s wife had no idea where he was. Derek was on vacation in Hawaii when he got her call, and immediately dialled the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, which connected him to the duty officer at the American Consulate in Guadalajara. Neither organization knew anything, and it would be another three days before the Consulate was able to physically locate him.
“Apparently whoever grabbed him didn’t want anyone knowing he was there, because by law he is supposed to be allowed to call the U.S. Consulate within 24 hours,” says Derek. “Troy also wasn’t told what he was being charged with for I don’t know how long.”
The crime of Bachmann is that he allegedly owed money to three of his growers. "It wasn’t true, but in the state of Nayarit, where he was arrested, a person is guilty until proven innocent. Unfortunately, the bookkeeper who had raided his office, also destroyed the documentation that could have easily proven his innocence."
"When appeals to the American Consulate and Senator Ron Wyden’s office led nowhere, Troy’s father, Mark Bachmann, who owns The Fly Fishing Shop in Welches, Oregon, took money out of his personal retirement account to pay a Mexico City private investigator to give him an independent assessment of the problem and what it would take to fix it. As a result, Troy now has a highly respected new attorney to spearhead his legal defence."
"However, funds are critically needed to help pay for Troy’s mounting legal bills and prison expenses, while the family works on raising public support to put pressure on the Mexican government to release him back to the U.S."
