SPOKANE, Wash. - A Spokane restaurant owner, the first in his family to be born in America, is trying to clear his name after he was accused of assaulting a former employee.

Matt Rai runs Taco Del Mar in RiverPark Square and after firing one of his workers for allegedly stealing suddenly he became the focus of a criminal investigation.

"It still blows my mind that somebody would make something this elaborate up," he said.

Rai was born shortly after his folks arrived in the U.S. from India.

"My parents worked very hard to get here, they worked pretty terrible jobs to get me through school," he said.

When he got out of WSU, Rai bought a Taco Del Mar franchise in RiverPark Square.

In June, Rai fired one of his workers after he suspected she had stolen a company credit card and used it at places like Wal-Mart. Rai sent her a Facebook message telling not to come to work anymore and asking her where he could send her final check.

The young woman never responded, but later that night police showed up on Rai's doorstep.

"She told them I went into her house, threw her against the wall a couple of times, put some holes in the wall and I was choking her," he said.

Rai denied strangling his former front counter help, but in their report police found injuries to the victim, a tipped over TV and holes where she said he had thrown her in the wall. Rai went to jail while his other employees kept his restaurant running.

Fortunately for Rai, one of the alleged victim's roommates signed an affidavit saying the woman had fabricated evidence of a fight at the scene, including her injuries.

"He witnessed her boyfriend hit her, they threw their TV on the ground, the holes were already there, they basically planned this together, and he witnessed it," Rai said.

The result of this attempt to smear his name for a crime that a witness confirmed he didn't commit was losing $10,000 in profits for a crime he says he didn't commit, and he'll never get an apology from the officers who arrested him or the prosecutor who pressed charges against him.

Prosecutors eventually dismissed the charges against Rai when they couldn't find the alleged victim to testify. His attorney said he wishes he could have had the chance to show a jury his client had been framed.