A slippery financial adviser who pulled off an astonishing bailout was captured tonight after two days on the run.
As authorities were closing in on him for shady dealings – and with his blond-bombshell wife leaving him – Marcus Schrenker staged a dangerous disappearing act that would have impressed Houdini. He parachuted from his private plane and zoomed off into the sunset on his motorcycle in an attempt to fake his own death.
He was taken into custody in northern Florida at a KOA campground, according to TV station WPMI in Mobile, Ala.
Schrenker, who was taken to Tallahassee Medical Center, had been on the lam for about two days.
As Schrenker flew from Indianapolis to Florida Sunday, 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 he had already jumped from the Piper Malibu, and the aircraft was on autopilot.
After it finally 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, they 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 previously 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.
In papers filed in connection with the raid, investigators suggested Schrenker might have access to at least $665,000 in the offshore accounts of a client.
The same day, Schrenker’s 36-year-old wife, Michelle, filed for divorce. She told authorities searching the house that her husband 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 the upscale neighborhood in McCord, Ind., known as “Cocktail Cove,” where million-dollar homes overlook a lake.
Schrenker, who owns two planes and collects luxury automobiles, moved to a nearby condominium after separating from his wife.
A little more than a week after the divorce filing, a judge in Maryland ordered him 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.
Days after the judge ordered Schrenker to pay Old Mutual Financial Life Insurance Co. $533,500, a second company, Creative Marketing International Corp. filed a lawsuit alleging that he similarly kept higher commissions for annuities than he had earned.
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 as usual. He was charged Tuesday, in absentia, with fraud for operating without a license.
As the story of Schrenker’s mysterious disappearance and capture broke, new details of his shady dealings have come 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 lost 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.
Early last year, the Indiana Department of Insurance filed a complaint against him on behalf of seven investors alleging the same fraud.
With Post Wire Services