A slippery financial adviser who pulled off an astonishing bailout was captured last night after two days on the run.
Marcus Schrenker was barely conscious and muttered the word “die” when federal agents found him bleeding from a slashed wrist, an investigator said Wednesday.
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As authorities were closing in on him for shady dealings – and with his blond-bombshell wife leaving him – Schrenker staged a dangerous disappearing act that would have impressed Houdini. He parachuted from his private plane Sunday and zoomed off on a motorcycle in an attempt to fake his own death.
He was taken into custody at a campground in the northern Florida city of Quincy, just outside Tallahassee.
Frank Chiumento, an assistant chief with the U.S. Marshals in Florida, said officers had to tend to Schrenker’s self-inflicted gash to the wrist before he was airlifted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Schrenker was listed in fair condition early Wednesday.
After getting information on the missing pilot’s whereabouts, about 15 marshals from a task force that had been tracking him from Alabama closed in on a pup tent inside the campground and nabbed Schrenker.
“He was semi-coherent,” Frank Chiumento, Assistant Chief of US Marshals Northern District of Florida, told the newspaper.
“We gave him verbal commands to show his hands. [At that point,] we went from apprehending a fugitive to providing first aid.”
Schrenker’s motorcycle was found at the campground, Chiumento said.
The arrest ended an odyssey that began when Schrenker took off from Indianapolis on Sunday saying he was bound for Florida.
He radioed a phony distress call over Birmingham, Ala., saying his windshield had shattered and he was bleeding profusely.
He then stopped responding to air-traffic controllers, and approaching military jet pilots saw the plane flying with its door open. They didn’t realize it at the time, but Schrenker had already jumped from the Piper Malibu, and the aircraft was on autopilot.
After it crashed in a Florida swamp two hours later, rescuers found the windshield undamaged. There was no sign of blood – or Schrenker.
The story then took a turn straight out of a screenwriter’s handbook.
Schrenker, 38, emerged from the woods 200 miles away near Childersburg, Ala., wet from the knees down and wearing aviation goggles, and told authorities he had been in a canoe accident.
Not seeing anything suspicious, police drove him to a nearby motel, where he checked in and soon disappeared. He was last seen running into the woods wearing a black hat.
“He didn’t leave a mess. He didn’t leave anything. He didn’t even take a shower,” said Yogi Patel, owner of the Harpersville Motel.
Later, he appeared at a storage facility seven miles away, where he had stashed a red 2008 Yamaha motorcycle with fully loaded saddlebags. Schrenker ditched his wet clothes in a trash bin and was off.
Hours later, a friend received an e-mail purportedly from Schrenker in which he said, “By the time you get this, I’ll be gone.
“I embarrassed my family for the last time,” he wrote.
Schrenker had plenty to run from.
On New Year’s Eve, officials with the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office raided his $4 million mansion, seizing computers, cash, files from his money-management business, the title to his Lexus and his passport. The state was investigating his Heritage Wealth Management Inc.
The same day, Schrenker’s 36-year-old wife, Michelle, filed for divorce. She told authorities searching the house that he had been having an affair and had moved out a week earlier.
She remained holed up with relatives in the 10,000-square-foot home in an upscale neighborhood of McCord, Ind., known as “Cocktail Cove,” where million-dollar homes overlook a lake.
A little more than a week after the divorce filing, a judge in Maryland ordered Schrenker to pay more than a half-million dollars to an insurance firm that had sued him for pocketing excessive commissions for annuities he had sold.
Around the same time, Schrenker’s stepfather died.
“He’s had a lot of ups and downs,” said his mother, Marcia Galoozis. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Authorities suspended his license as an investment adviser after the raid and threatened to take it away for good, but he continued to go about his business.
He was charged yesterday, in absentia, with fraud for operating without a license. Authorities said Schrenker may also face charges in connection with his abandoning the plane in flight.
As the story of Schrenker’s mysterious disappearance and capture broke, new details of his shady dealings came to light.
“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, an Atlanta pilot. Kinney said his parents were scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees related to annuities.
Kinney, 49, said Schrenker schmoozed his family in the mid-1990s and they all became close.
“He was like a family member, his wife, his family, the whole deal,” Kinney said. He said his parents had $900,000 – much of their life savings – invested in National Western Life annuities through Schrenker.
He later transferred the money to Amerus Life deferred annuities but failed to tell them that the transaction would cost them more than $135,000 in “surrender penalties,” Kinney said.
He believes Schrenker pocketed much of the money.
Additional reporting by Ed Robinson, Wire Services