Brenda Martin's father said he may never have reconnected with his long-lost daughter had she had not gained attention over her legal case that left her in a Mexican jail for 26 months.

"Well, it's kind of bizarre that I found her because she was in prison. She mentioned that also in her third phone call," Tom Martin told CBC News in an interview from Surrey, B.C., conducted before his daughter was found guilty Tuesday afternoon.

"If she hadn't had been in prison, I probably wouldn't have found her."

A judge finally handed down the verdict against the 51-year-old woman just after 3:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, finding her guilty of being part of a $60-million internet fraud scheme run by Canadian Alyn Waage, who was convicted of fraud in 2006.

Throughout the last two years, Martin has insisted she was innocent and worked for Waage only as a chef. Waage, who is now serving a 10-year jail term in a U.S. prison testified Martin was unaware of his activities.

Contact lost 50 years ago

Tom Martin said he last saw his daughter in the summer of 1958, when she was 18 months old, before he split up with his wife.

Martin said his family tried to find his daughter for years but he was estranged from her mother and couldn't find her when she moved east. He said he also assumed she didn't want to be found.

According to the Toronto Star, Brenda Martin had thought her father was dead. She had gone to British Columbia in 1978 to look for him but gave up her search when she was told he had been killed in an accident.

Three weeks ago, Tom Martin said he saw a newspaper article about a woman named Brenda Martin in Mexico, aged 51, the same age his daughter would be.

He then went on the internet, discovered her exact date of birth and sent an e-mail to Brenda Martin's childhood friend Debra Tieleman. He asked if she knew Brenda's middle name and if she was born in New Westminster, B.C., in 1957 and her mother's maiden name.

18 calls from Mexican jail

He said shortly after, he got a call from Brenda's mother Marjorie. The next day, Brenda called him from her Mexican jail.

"It was awesome," he told CBC News. "She asked me if I was really her father and then she reverted back to a little girl and said, 'Daddy, get me out of here.'"

Since the initial call, Tom Martin said he had spoken with his daughter 18 times.

"One day she'd be hopeful, the next day she was totally broken down because things weren't going right. We just kept telling her, 'Hang on, hang on.'"

Now that she has been found guilty, Martin faces five years in prison with no chance of parole.

But Martin's friends and family had previously indicated that in the case of a guilty verdict, she would request to be transferred to Canada, as an appeal would require her to remain in a Mexican jail until the appeal works its way through the legal system.

"Hopefully she gets out as soon as possible and recuperates in Ontario," Tom Martin said.

"And then we're planning to fly her out here."

Martin said his daughter was looking forward to meeting the two brothers and two sisters she had never met.