Justice is Served—258 Days Late

The extraordinary ordeal of Troy Bachmann

Up until a few months ago, Derek Bachmann had a closet full of fly rods, one of the perks of a lifetime spent in service of his family’s business, The Fly Fishing Shop, located in Welches, Oregon, not far from the Sandy River. Now he’s down to four. “I’ve sold them all,” explains Bachmann, “to finance the effort to get my brother out of jail.” The sacrifice paid off. Along with some extra closet space, Derek has his brother back.

Troy Bachmann, Derek’s brother, was arrested on May 19, 2015, at his business in Jalisco, in northern Mexico. And after 258 days of egregiously wrongful imprisonment, Troy was freed at midnight on January 31.

After years of helping to run the family fly shop, Troy started Frontier Flies in 1994, sold that enterprise, and launched Fly H20, which was sold to Umpqua Feather Merchants in 2008. His produce export business—Fancy Fresh—focused on production from several small family farms surrounding his Mexican home. After more than a decade of learning Mexican regulations, customs, and culture, it appeared the world of fresh fruit and vegetables would treat Troy and his family as well as the world of flyfishing did. But weeks before his arrest, Troy had noticed some discrepancies in the books. He had a professional audit performed, confirming his worst suspicions. He would have to confront the accountant he’d recently hired after returning from a trip to the U.S., aimed at marketing his growing produce business.

While he was gone, the crooked bookkeeper, along with four other employees, drained business accounts, destroyed records that would have proved Troy’s innocence, and lied to local growers, claiming that Troy was planning on skipping Mexico without paying any of them. When he showed up back in Jalisco last May, to straighten things out with riled suppliers, he was greeted by police, handcuffed, and taken to jail. “Everything that happened since then was a terrible violation of rights,” says Derek. “Human rights, as well as Troy’s rights under the Mexican constitution. Worse, they’ve lost everything. Everything has been stolen from them.” On a brighter note, warrants have been issued for the employees of Fancy Fresh that framed Troy, and the equivalent of the D.A. of the Mexican state of Nayurit has personally promised they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The whole ordeal cast quite a pall over most of 2015 for the Bachmann clan. Derek was on a family vacation in Hawaii last May when he fielded a hysterical phone call from his sister-in-law. She hadn’t seen Troy in days. No one bothered to inform her that her husband had been arrested. Derek immediately phoned the U.S. Consulate in Mexico City. It took them three more days to locate Troy. He was in the notorious Venustiano Carranza Prison in the city of Tepic, with seven other inmates in a 5- by 10-foot cell. One toilet. (An infamous prison riot here, federales and inmates firing at will at each other, killed 40 people in 1988.)

Meanwhile, the house that Troy, his wife, and one-month old son lived in on a hilltop in Jalisco was confiscated at gunpoint, courtesy of the local police force, as was business equipment, including the company trucks. No one bothered to question anyone but Troy on the embezzlement scam, which Derek estimates netted the perpetrators a quarter million dollars.

It took too long, but by mid-November of last year, jurisdiction of the trial had been moved from the ethically dubious courts of the state of Nayarit to Mexican federal court. By December, Troy Bachmann was acquitted of all charges. It looked like he might be home for Christmas. Except then, in a move as corrupt as a crime syndicate’s gambling racket, Bachmann was baselessly re-charged with new crimes. “The regional government was at this point just trying to save face,” says Derek. “There are 3,000 prisoners in a prison built for 650. It’s an international human rights issue.”

Paying the price for the excruciatingly slow wheels of Mexican justice to turn—lawyers, private investigators, rent in a Mexican prison cell, and a shoestring campaign to draw attention to Troy’s plight—has cost Derek $80,000 dollars over the past half year. He lost his job as a web marketer, Derek says, because he was told he was making too many phone calls in the effort to return Troy home. “It took about $4,000 dollars a month to keep in touch with Troy, keep his wife and baby safe here in the U.S. and pay our legal bills,” says Derek. Friends of the Bachmanns can still donate online to help defray the cost of Troy’s imprisonment at friendsoftroy.com, or to the Friends of Troy account at any U.S. Bank location. Understandably, Troy isn’t talking to the press or anyone else except his wife and baby for at least a week. “He’s a little underweight, but other than that he’s fine,” Derek says.

Meanwhile, on February 20, the Fly Shop will host a homecoming soire in honor of Troy, who Derek said has not ruled out returning to business in Mexico, but with lessons learned. “Without political pressure the court process can take years and longer if you have no direct influences.” Violent crimes take priority and there has been a surge of that over the past few years. Without the help of Senator Jeff Merkley and his amazing staff, along with some very key officials in the Mexican Government, this would still be happening.”