There have been numerous articles written in Canada about Brenda Martin and this article in Mexico about Rebecca Roth, but only a small handful written about Rebecca in the US press, mostly done by Margie Bouhle at The Oregonian.
Why has there been so little press in the US? Is the US media as blind in drawing attention to one of its own in trouble as the US government is in protecting the rights of one of their own?
You'll have to draw your own conclusions on that one, but if you find this story as appalling as I do, please contact not only your local and state representatives through THIS LINK , but contact any media individuals you know as well and challenge them to take up this story and bring attention to this woman's plight. If you ever travel, wouldn't you want someone to do the same for you should you wind up in this predicament?
As you read through this article, you'll see that one of the things that the prosecution claims is that Rebecca was laundering money. She was concerned after Alyn Waage's arrested and sought legal counsel about continuing to pay his bills. She was told that it was OK, because "It isn't against the law for you to help someone that is in jail." That advice and quote are from Alyn Waage's own attorney during the only conversation Rebecca ever had with him. That same attorney was previously the attorney for Vincente Fox, former President of Mexico. Considering the source of that advice, she felt she that she was breaking no laws and continued to do her job.
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'Other woman' caught in Tri-West snare ready to file appeal'
Written by Dale Hoyt Palfrey
Saturday, 26 April 2008
www.guadalajarareporter.com
Printed with permission
While her case was relegated to secondary status in the media feeding frenzy that has played out at the Puente Grande prison complex, Rebecca Roth ended up with the short end of the stick in the verdicts handed down April 22 by Judge Luis Nuñez Sanchez.
The 49-year-old U.S. citizen was found guilty on two separate criminal counts related to the Tri-West international investment scam, carrying a nine-year sentence and a fine of 44,812 pesos.
Rebecca Roth has deliberately maintained a low profile through-out her two-year legal ordeal.
Frustrated and angry over what she sees as a gross miscarriage of justice, Roth says she will continue her fight for freedom and appeal the court decision early next week.
Roth recognizes that the appeal process will take at least six months, but she is determined to take that avenue before considering a cross-border judicial arrangement for transfer to a U.S. prison.
“I have to appeal,” she told the Guadalajara Reporter in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “Otherwise I’ll never get a chance to prove my innocence.”
Unlike her Canadian co-defendant Brenda Martin, Roth has deliberately maintained a low profile throughout the two-year legal ordeal she has endured due to her employment ties with Alyn Richard Waage, mastermind of a notorious multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of unwary investors.
Roth is now convinced that the intense pressure from Canadian government officials, politicians and the nation’s press calling for Martin’s acquittal and release backfired and worked against both women.
“The judge had 30 days to weigh final arguments. With the foreign press camped out on his doorstep he sped up his decision without taking the time to carefully review the case,” Roth lamented.
At a final hearing, held April 14, Roth eschewed histrionics, opting instead for a low-key, methodical presentation of her defense arguments. She had spent two weeks preparing for her statement by wading through the 325-page English translation of the prosecution summary to construct a visual aid she labeled the “Prosecution’s Wall of Evidence.” She hoped to tear down that wall brick by brick by pointing the judge to contradictions, non-sequiturs and other details that seemed to speak in her favor. The chart shows rectangles representing 98 documents that were used to prove her guilt. Yet 88 of those documents do not even mention her name. Roth demonstrated other fine points with more illustrations, including a depiction of green “money bags” that underscore the huge discrepancy between the millions that changed hands between Tri-West and investors and the paltry amounts that went through her own accounts.
The effort to prove her innocence seems to have been in vain. She says the judge was clearly distracted by the gaggle of reporters hovering around his desk.
Roth has always acknowledged working for Waage as a personal assistant in the early months of 2001, a job she says entailed handling minor administrative duties for her well-heeled employer. These included making travel arrangements for his family and “business” entourage, paying utilities and miscellaneous household bills for his various Puerto Vallarta properties and other tedious day-to-day tasks.
Tri-West began unraveling in April 2001, when Waage was busted at the Puerto Vallarta airport with more than 1,000 undeclared cashier checks stashed in a brief case, worth a total of around 4.5 million dollars. He was in jail for four months, but when released after posting bail, promptly fled to Costa Rica. He was arrested there in September 2001 and extradited to the United States to face trial.
Roth’s activities in the four-month lapse while Waage was in Mexican custody are what got her into trouble. She agreed to continue helping her boss while he was behind bars, drawing from deposits made to her personal investment account to cover his expenses. She says there are receipts that account for every peso, but Mexican authorities look at the transfer of funds as proof that she was involved in laundering Waage’s ill-gotten gains. She denies any knowledge of Waage’s nefarious business dealings, or any suspicion that he was involved in criminal activity until he went on the lam.
A full year passed before Mexican authorities questioned her in regard to Tri-West. Little did she know that she was part of an investigation that would lead to an arrest warrant being issued against her only a few weeks later.
With a clear conscience, Roth had remained in Puerto Vallarta long after other members of the fraud gang had either been detained to face justice in the United States or fled the country. She stayed on with proper immigration status to run a small ceramics business. Then, on February 13, 2006, police picked her up. After several hours at the Puerto Vallarta police station she was hauled off to Puente Grande outside Guadalajara in a pick-up truck under cover of night. Officers told her she was only being taken in to give a statement and could expect to return home the next day. She has been trapped in an increasingly tortuous legal nightmare ever since.
So far, Roth’s case has not captured much interest from the press in her home state of Oregon. Her written pleas for support from Senator Gordon Smith and U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza have gone unanswered. Her principal rock has been a sister, Barbara Moodhe, who makes weekly treks from her lakeside home in San Juan Cosala for family visits at the prison. Otherwise she relies on cordial relations with many of her fellow inmates.
“The women here have been very supportive and tried to comfort me, but right now there is no comfort.”
As she heads into the next legal round, Roth is simply clinging to the hope that she will draw a neutral judge to hear her appeal, someone who will weigh the evidence fairly and listen to what she deems to be the obvious logic behind her defense case.
(End of Guadalajara Reporter story)
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If you have finished reading this post and have read the previous posts in this blog, you are getting a pretty good idea of what has happened here. If you have feelings of injustice stirring in you, please take action and contact your members of Congress through THIS LINK because it is now time for Rebecca to get attention and justice.
Please pass this blog to everyone you know and ask them to read it and take action. It was the people in Canada that demanded that the press and government do something to help Brenda Martin and it will take the same involvement in the US.
I will be posting more articles with even more riveting details soon so, please come back and find out more.
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