Yet unknown to his neighbours the dashing investment advisor faced fraud charges, financial ruin, furious clients and a marriage that was in tatters - and he tried to escape them all by faking his own death in a plane crash. His attempt very nearly succeeded - but was sabotaged by two crucial miscalculations in the air, investigators believe.
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How a High-Flying Fraudster Fell to Earth After Plane Death Hoax Failed
Marcus Schrenker liked to boast that he had perfected the precision of a top pilot.
By Philip Sherwell in Geist, Indiana
17 January 2009
In his stunt plane, he would skim across the waters of Cocktail Cove and fly loops over the lavish $2.5 million (£1.6m), four-storey lakeside mansion where he lived his outwardly idyllic family life.
Yet unknown to his neighbours the dashing investment advisor faced fraud charges, financial ruin, furious clients and a marriage that was in tatters - and he tried to escape them all by faking his own death in a plane crash. His attempt very nearly succeeded - but was sabotaged by two crucial miscalculations in the air, investigators believe.
It was a hoax straight from the pages of an airport thriller. Mr. Schrenker, 38, who allegedly spent years duping investors, believed that he could also out-smart the police when he staged the ultimate bail-out from the air.
He took off from an air field near his home in an affluent Indianapolis suburb last Sunday, after registering a flight plan that was supposed to take him to the Florida beach resort of Destin.
After calling in a mayday over Alabama, he set his Piper jet controls to auto-pilot and pointed it towards the Gulf of Mexico. Then he donned a parachute and jumped to the ground where he picked up a motorbike which he had previously stashed in rented storage.
It might have been the perfect ruse, except that instead of falling unseen into the sea his plane ran out of fuel while still over dry land, smashing into the bayou near homes in a densely-populated stretch of Florida. Mr. Schrenker, it was clear, had not died in the crash and the fugitive was found two days later in a $25-a-night campsite with his wrists slashed, apparently opting for a genuine suicide attempt after his hopes of disappearing and starting a new life failed.
Investigators are working on the theory that the man who made his living crunching numbers had got his fuel consumptions sums badly wrong, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. For Mr. Schrenker had brought his Piper down below 2,500 feet when he jumped, lower than necessary and a height at which the thicker air increased fuel consumption.
The door also remained open after he bailed out, providing a further drag on the plane and allowing Air National Guard pilots scrambled in response to his bogus emergency call to see that there was no sign of anyone on board or damage to the windscreen, as he had reported in the mayday.
“The plane would probably have reached the Gulf if he hadn’t made those mistakes,” said Joe Weingarten, a retired air force engineer and neighbour who knew the couple. “And then who knows what would have happened.”
Evidence of Mr. Schrenker’s elaborate plot – a mixture of a Tom Clancy novel with James Bond tactics - emerged as Florida sheriffs recovered items from the wreckage that the accused fraudster believed would have been forever lost at sea.
These included a US atlas and campsite guide with the Alabama and Florida pages ripped out and written notes that included the words “cracked windshield, window imploded, bleeding profusely” – the same phrases he used in his mayday.
US marshals and sheriff’s deputies tracked him down to his tent hide-out after tracing an email he sent to a friend using the campground’s internet service provider. He was bleeding badly, near-unconscious and repeatedly mumbled “die” as he weakly tried to resist medical aid.
After his release from hospital, he is expected to face federal charges in Florida of making a false distress call, intentionally wrecking his plane and possibly endangering life. And in his home state of Indiana, he has been charged with fraud by financial regulators for allegedly misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients – many of whom had been friends or fellow pilots.
The case has echoes of the much bigger scandal involving Bernard Madoff, the disgraced New York financier who had said he ran a $50 billion pyramid scheme. An Indiana official told The Sunday Telegraph that they now received calls from “dozens” of investors and did not know the full extent of client losses.
In the affluent boat-owning Indianapolis suburbs built around the tendrils of the Geist Reservoir, there was little surprise that Mr. Schrenker’s high-flying lifestyle had imploded so spectacularly.
“The house of cards had to collapse. He was spending money like water and I didn’t see a printing press in there,” said Jeff Kucic, who runs an estate agent business next door to the now-closed offices of Mr. Schrenker’s Icon Group.
“Marcus was very flash, very showy. He would buzz the reservoir in that stunt plane of his and claim he’d flown all these sorties in the air force but who knows with Marcus. He was charming one moment and would blow up in your face the next.”
Some neighbours said he would invite children to the house to play with his daughter and two young sons on the family water trampoline, set up next to their boat, while pursuing feuds with their parents.
One man who experienced Mr. Schrenker’s Jekyll and Hyde moods at first hand was British-born property developer Stephen Shea, a neighbour across Cocktail Cove where on warm weekends boaters gather for floating drinks parties, clinking glasses from craft to craft.
Mr. Shea became friendly with Schrenker several years ago after he saw the investment manager perform loop-the-loops over the lake. But after Mr. Schrenker leased office space in one of his buildings, the relationship rapidly soured and the police were called during one confrontation.
“There was just constant trouble,” said Mr. Shea, president of Paramount Realty. “He was always complaining and didn’t pay the rent. There were mysterious problems with taps being left on and toilets blocked. In the end, we just ended the relationship. We didn’t want any more to do with him.
“Shortly after he vacated the building, my boat was cut loose late at night and sent crashing over the dam here. A week later, Marcus sailed up the back of my house and said: ‘I got you’. There’s no proof of anything but the timing was very strange. Things like that don’t happen around here.”
Even by the swanky standards of the neighbourhood, the 10,000-sq-ft, four-storey, three-garage, stone and brick home that Mr. Schrenker built just two years ago is impressive. A 28-ft cruiser was tethered to the private dock last week on the heavily-iced waters.
Mr. Schrenker’s wife of 13 years, Michelle, is still living in the house with their three children. A nanny who answered the door said the family had no comment and curtly told uninvited visitors to leave the snow-covered property.
Mrs. Schrenker, a glamorous blonde who met her husband at university, filed for divorce on Dec 30, the day before the home and offices where she also worked were raided by investigators from the Indiana state securities board.
Her lawyer said that she was seeking to end the marriage after discovering that her husband had a mistress and that she had known nothing of his financial woes. But Indiana secretary of state Todd Rokita, who oversees the securities investigation, said he would oppose any effort by Mrs. Schrenker to gain control of the house, boat and remaining stunt plane.
“The divorce plan could be part of this whole plan [by Marcus Schrenker] to escape,” he said. “Whether she knew it happened or not, she benefited from this type of life and it is a life of ill-gotten gain.”
The Schrenkers had seemed like the poster couple for the American dream – good-looking college sweethearts who lived in an apparently idyllic existence. A promotional photograph shows the clean-cut Marcus standing with his arms around his beautiful wife, their gleaming silver Lexus car and Piper jet behind them. But it was based on a huge lie, it now appears.
“To all outward appearances, he seemed like a very successful wealthy young guy and dedicated family man,” said Mr. Weingarten. “Michelle is gorgeous and stunning but also delightful and intelligent. And the house was spectacular. They really seemed like they had it all.”
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