I Languished In A Mexican Prison

There were many times when I felt like giving up.

The wildcats became my pets, and the guards would take one of the kittens, put it under their boots and smash it to death right in front of me, just to mentally torment me.

Brenda Martin

Date Posted: 07/18/08

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I suffered in a Mexican prison for two years. Two years, two months, and twenty-two days, to be exact. Since I’ve gotten my “freedom” back, I suffer still. I have very bad sleeping problems. I’ve only just now been able to go back on my medication. I take little baby steps. I’m overwhelmed sometimes, but I think I see little bits of light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m not sure how I hung on while I was in Mexico. I guess it was people telling me how many people were behind me and praying for me. It helped having people tell me not to give up.

Why Mexico?

I was living in Tucson, Arizona and moved back to Canada to get back together with a boyfriend. Well, that lasted two weeks. I didn’t really want to go back to Tucson, so I thought, "You know what? I’m going to go to Puerto Vallarta." We used to vacation there, I’d met a lot of people and I knew I could get employment.

I had a job within a month, as a chef manager of a well-known restaurant. It was too many hours, too little pay…and that’s when I met Alyn Waage. Of course I didn’t know it then, but Alyn operated what’s been called the largest Internet fraud scheme in history, defrauding over $60 million from 15,000 people. He was arrested after I stopped working for him.

I have no use for the man now. I’m very upset that I was duped by him. I believe that the fraud he did was probably a lot more than what was estimated. He’s probably still got money out there.

The Arrest

I was picked up under false pretence. I got a call from this man named Antonio. He didn’t speak much English, so we had a hard time communicating. He was talking about having a 60th birthday party for his mother, and said he’d heard I was one of the best caterers in Vallarta. We arranged for him to come over the next day with an English-speaking person so we could have a conversation more easily.