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