Financier Marcus Schrenker crashed his own plane to fake his death

23-Mar-09
By David M N James

Financier Marcus Schrenker a trained pilot is accused of crashing his plane to fake his own death. Investigators looking into the case say that the multi millionaire who is on record for riches and a good life crashed his own plane to fake his own death. It is strange how a man with all the money one would need would like to be dead while still alive.

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Michelle Shrenkker wife to Marcus Shrenker participated in a recent dateline expose about the issue. Michael, the millionaire was a financial advisor. He did portfolio management for affluent individuals. That is how his wife can only describe him. However, this rich man caused ripples at Cocktail Cove near Indianapolis, a very plush area with beautiful homes whereby his was the most beautiful and conspicuous.

He had a beautiful wife and great kids. He had planes, cars, motorcycles, and boats. He was rich and a symbol of what money represented. However, at one time, this multimillionaire told off his wife Michelle about a holiday ‘we can’t afford it’. It is way off for such a rich man not to afford a cheap holiday at Florida. His wife filed a divorce, and Marcus, then, was caught on camera flying high with a girlfriend.

Apparently, Marcus refused going to visit his sick parents to avoid a vacation with his family. He was caught on camera, through airport surveillance, flying to Key West with his girlfriend. However, on December 20th , Michelle was upstairs when her daughter told her that there was a cop at the door.

Marcus actually took off. He had suspicions that the law was closing in on him over his financial dealings. Marcus was selling properties without a license and the law had already gathered enough evidence to warrant seizing those properties. The money involved was amounting to millions. He tried to convince Michelle out of the divorce. His father died on January 4th. He attended the funeral but during the evening, he was talking business as usual.

According to Dateline NBC, On Jan. 9, Marcus was hit with a half-million dollar judgment in a federal lawsuit brought by an insurance company. He had been holding on to commissions that he should have returned to the insurer. He was growing weary and kept telling his wife that someone was yelling at him but never told away who it was.

On Jan. 10, Marcus drove to Alabama, using a trailer to drop off a red motorcycle. Then, quickly, back to Indianapolis, and then, on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 11, he filed a flight plan for Destin, Fla. That evening, airport security cameras caught Marcus’ pickup truck doing donuts on the snow covered tarmac. They brought his plane out, and in his high-powered, $1.9-million Piper Meridian. Florida was less than three hours away. It was 6:45 eastern time when he took off.

However, the traffic tower lost contact with him. They reached his wife and asked her about his cell phone number. After another hour of reckoning, the air force called her asking about who owned the plane. On the night of Sunday, Jan. 11, a high-performance, single-engine turboprop belonging to investment adviser Marcus Schrenker was en route from Anderson, Ind., to Destin, Fla. Marcus was at the controls.. Less than two hours into the flight, while the plane was somewhere over northern Ala., air traffic controllers received a distress call.

Finally, the plane crashed. Afterwards, the plane was found but no body was in it. According to the police, the plane crashed into a Florida swamp. Police say that this was the kind of a guy who could fake his death. An air force jet trailing the plane saw that the planes cockpit was open and one was inside. Marcus was alive. He didn’t not die. He abandoned a safe plane. He had a motor cycle stashed somewhere and he used to hitch to a motel.

Infact, police suppositions could be right since Marcus had already sent some kind of goodbye notes or emails. He wrote that he really did have a window implode in flight, said he lost consciousness. Said he still loved Michelle and how sorry he was for treating her so terribly. He also said, “I have embarrassed my family for the last time and by the time you read this, I’ll be gone.” He sliced his wrists and lost blood as he attempted to commit suicide. He was rescued.

A strong case was built against Marcus. He had even ripped of his own closest friends. Michelle Schrenker is left at the big house on the Cove with her three children. Along with all of Marcus’ assets, her assets have been frozen, too. Moreover, she says she is penniless. According to a Dateline interview, Marcus Schrenker is under mental evaluation at a federal facility in Florida. A judge will determine if he will stand trial on federal charges of crashing his plane intentionally and making a false distress call. He also faces charges back in Indiana for working as an investment adviser with an expired license, and for securities fraud.

Marcus said that the plane crash was an accident, that he did not try to fake his own death, and that “Michelle has never received any compensation, assets, indirectly or directly, from client funds. It was a story of from riches to rags.