Bailout fails to save pilot
Arrest follows financial crash
HARPERSVILLE, Ala. — With his world crumbling around him, investment adviser Marcus Schrenker opted for a bailout. But his plan to escape personal turmoil was shortlived. He was caught Tuesday.
In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old businessman and amateur daredevil pilot had apparently tried to fake his death in a plane crash Sunday, secretly parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens of central Alabama.
But the three-day saga came to an end when authorities caught up to Schrenker in North Florida.
Schrenker was apprehended at about 10 p. m. in a tent at a campground in Quincy, Fla., a U. S. Marshals spokesman said.
One of his wrists was cut, but he is alive and in custody.
Schrenker was on the run not only from the law but also from divorce, a state investigation of his businesses and angry investors who accuse him of stealing potentially millions in savings they entrusted to him.
“We’ve learned over time that he’s a pathological liar — you don’t believe a single word that comes out of his mouth,” said Charles Kinney, 49, an airline pilot from Atlanta who alleges Schrenker took $135,000 of his parents’ retirement fund.
Sunday, Schrenker was flying his single-engine Piper Malibu to Florida from his Indiana home when he radioed from 2,000 feet that he was in trouble. He told the tower the windshield had imploded and that his face was bloody.
Then his radio went silent.
Military jets tried to intercept the plane and found the door open, the cockpit dark. The pilots followed until it crashed in a Florida Panhandle bayou surrounded by homes.
Searchers found no sign of Schrenker’s body. They now know they should never have expected to find one.
More than 220 miles to the north, at a convenience store in Childersburg, Ala., police picked up a man using Schrenker’s Indiana driver’s license and carrying a pair of what appeared to be pilot’s goggles. The man, who was wet from the knees down, told the officers he had been in a canoe accident.
After officers gave him a lift to a nearby motel, Schrenker made his way to a storage unit he had rented just the day before his flight. He climbed aboard a red racing motorcycle with full saddlebags and sped off into the countryside.
The search that began in the air and continued across land and sea was later turned over to the U. S. marshals.
Schrenker was at the head of an impressive slate of businesses. Through his companies Heritage Wealth Management, Heritage Insurance Services and Icon Wealth Management, he was responsible for providing financial advice and managing portfolios worth millions.
He collected luxury automobiles, owned two airplanes and lived in a 10,000-square-foot house in an upscale neighborhood known as “Cocktail Cove,” where affluent boaters often socialize with cocktails in hand.
Authorities in Indiana have been investigating allegations that Schrenker sold clients annuities and charged them exorbitant fees they weren’t aware they would face.
State Insurance Commissioner Jim Atterholt said Schrenker would close the investors out of one annuity and move them to another while charging them especially high “surrender charges” — in one case costing a retired couple $135,000 of their original $900,000 investment.
The aviation enthusiast had persuaded dozens of active and retired Delta Air Lines pilots to allow him to manage their retirement accounts.
“He had a way about him — you trusted the guy,” said David M. Smith, a retired pilot.
In recent weeks, Schrenker’s life began to spin out of control.
On Dec. 31, in response to a lawsuit by several plaintiffs, officers searched Schrenker’s home, seizing the passports of Schrenker and his wife, Michelle; $6,036 in cash; the title to a Lexus; and deposit slips for bank accounts in his wife’s name. A day before, Michelle Schrenker filed for divorce.
