Wednesday, October 6, 2010

A Friendly Acquaintance Arrested

Jeffrey Lynn Cassman, aka "Mark Francis", aka "Don Marco", the author of the very popular blog "GuateLiving", linked to my blog several times. He found us while making his list of blogs in Guatemala. I have enjoyed reading his blog almost every day for over a year now. Many of his posts were informative, funny, and mirrored experiences we have on a regular basis. He also had a lot of time apparently because he read most Guatemalan blogs and would link to the interesting ones, thus saving everybody the trouble of having to surf through all the blogs ourselves to find the interesting nuggets. You can learn a lot from other people's experiences and perspectives, but not many have time to read 20-30 blogs a day.

It turns out that he was a scam artist, wanted in TN and fled the country with his wife and 9 children (the 10th was born here right before we met him.) I'm not sure why somebody running from their past would have a high profile blog and purposefully write so that people would hate him, but I assume it has something to do with his "Investment Opportunities." He told everybody that he had worked as an investment banker in Phoenix before seeing the decline in the States, investing in Gold and selling everything to move to Guatemala for the "cultural experience." Now he is in jail awaiting extradition while his family is penniless and illegal aliens in Guatemala. He was arrested in the Central Park of Antigua.

It's interesting to look back now and see how he handled rumors and criticism. Shelley said, "Some people are born with too much nerve."

It wouldn't be the first time we've eaten with a criminal, but most of the time here we know about it. I liked the guy but Shelley always had big reservations. Chalk another one up to a "woman's intuition."

Update: Here's a link if you'd like to read an official report



5 comments:

  1. Wow...very interesting...! No more Guateliving?
    -Jay

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  2. for the record- Fox news was cancelled in Antigua and in Guatemala City or atleast on both of the cable services we had access to. lol

    also- WE CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!! crazy world!

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  3. wow.... you have the MOST interesting experiences. Yes, women's intuition is God given!

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  4. I have read this at least 10 times now, as well as expatmom's blog about it! I still am amazed!

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  5. woah! I found your blog through Mark's blog and had been in email contact with him over a year ago as I was contemplating a 6 week summer visit to Antigua with my kids (I chose Costa Rica instead). I'm shocked!

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