Original subtitles

This is a CNBC original.

In this episode of American Greed, Marcus Schrenker.

Remember this guy?

The plane crashed in Milton, Florida Sunday night. He was a stunt pilot.

Basically, it's a very high -G routine that has a lot of gyroscopic recession.

I've seen him do a few things in the airplane that were...

Boy, this guy knows what he's doing. And clients say a con man.

People trusted him, in some cases with a million dollars. Who had the country

wondering for days whether he was dead or alive.

Long range, I think we're in for a tough fall. The American economy is in

trouble. January of 2009.

The nation is reeling from the worst financial meltdown since the Great

Depression. And there is an astounding decline in business in the country. On

Wall Street, the stock market is in free fall.

On Main Street, home prices are plummeting.

And inside a million -dollar house near Indianapolis, a money manager named

Marcus Schrenker is ignoring the phone that rings off the hook.

Many of his clients were expressing concern about the rather dour economic

outlook, and then they began contacting Marcus, and suddenly they weren't able

to get a hold of him. He wasn't returning their phone calls. He'd have

of excuses why he couldn't get in touch with them.

On January 11, 2009,

Schrenker tells his family he's going on a brief trip.

An avid pilot, he boards his single -engine Piper Malibu.

planning to fly solo to Florida.

There was an enormous amount of stress in the weeks and days leading up to his

flight to Florida. It was a very stressful period for him that he was on

medications, and as he said, he was not in his right mind.

Schrenker lifts off around 6 .30 p .m.

With just a little under two hours into the flight, He sends out a Mayday call.

And

that's

the last communication Marcus Schrenker had with the Coast Guard.

Thirty minutes later, Schrenker's plane crashes in a wooded area near Milton,

Florida.

Rescue crews arrive, but the twisted wreckage they find doesn't match the

distress call.

The plane's windshield is intact.

There's no blood.

And more importantly, there's no pilot.

As his face is splashed on TV screens around the world, a fascinated public

wonders, where is Marcus Schrenker?

Is he dead or alive?

Schrenker grows up in a small town in Indiana. From the beginning, he seems

restless, always in a hurry to get somewhere else.

If I could take a snapshot of him, it'd be that he was climbing all the time,

trying to climb all the time, going somewhere.

In 1996, Schranker graduates from Purdue University, having studied both

financial planning and aviation.

Just out of school, he launches Heritage Wealth Management, a financial planning

firm focused on low -risk investments.

So they were fairly safe investments to be handled.

Qualified money and retirement accounts and things like that that really

couldn't be manipulated or done badly with.

Schrenker's money management business grows.

He marries, has kids, and settles into the Geist neighborhood north of

Indianapolis, a moneyed enclave of the city's elite.

You know, Geist is an interesting place. You have a lot of new money.

You have a lot of people who are doctors and lawyers and athletes. And so

they're kind of drawn, I think, because of the opulence, the extravagance of the

homes out there, and because of the lake.

There's no denying that there's a lot of wealth out there, and I think people

are attracted by that.

Always one to hunt for new investment clients,

Schrager uses his love of aviation to make friends with some commercial pilots

and manage their retirement accounts.

Pilots. Marcus was a pilot.

There was an automatic sort of entree for him. He was able to get in there and

meet these people, get on their good side, trust me, I'll do the right thing

you. In 2002, Mike Kenney's brother, a commercial pilot, introduces him to Mark

Schranker. Kenney has a significant investment portfolio and is looking for

new money manager.

He seemed like a very intelligent, very knowledgeable person about what he was

talking about.

He proclaimed that we only put our clients in the best of the best. Best of

best. That was the term that was used quite a bit.

Schrager tells Kinney he makes money only from a flat percent he charges

clients. It sounds like a good arrangement.

You pay me for my performance, fee -based advice. He declared very much up

front, I do not make commissions on anything I sell.

And that was the relationship that I'd come from from the previous advisor, and

that was one of the things I was uncomfortable with. So that really

ear. And I liked the idea that he would be paid based on how well he did for me

and how well he managed my investments.

That's what I wanted, and he was very big in saying that.

Schreinker says he only makes money if his clients make money, taking the

standard 1%. Before long, Mike, his brother, and several relatives all have

their money managed by Schreinker.

Very safe funds that had good return values on them. And that was what

me. As Kenny will later find out, Schrenker is doing precisely the

what he's promised.

Rather than investing in mutual funds and charging no commissions, Schrenker

putting Kenny's money into annuities, low -risk insurance products with high

commissions for the selling agent.

And worse, investigators say Schrenker is churning.

moving Kinney's money from account to account, maximizing his commissions.

Churning is usually a behavior by agents where they put money into an annuity,

and then they go ahead and surrender it within, you know, a couple of years and

put it into yet another annuity.

Churning costs his clients huge surrender fees for early withdrawal.

But Schrenker seems blinded by greed.

Marcus Schrenker can earn anywhere from 6 % to 18 % of the contract value on

commissions. So each and every annuity that they sell, they get that

Schrenker's scheme is bringing in lots of money, but he wants more.

And like magic, opportunity knocks on his door.

Rumors are flying that Delta Airlines will be filing for bankruptcy.

Its home base is in Atlanta, the busiest airport in the world.

Suddenly, thousands of pilots will be nudged into early retirement and given

lump sum payouts.

There's nothing more scary than having seven figures of money and not knowing

what to do with it.

So I started asking around, hey, do you have a guy that's doing your money? And

one of my favorite co -pilots, he said, I would trust him with my kids. That's

how much I trust this guy.

I said, who was that guy?

It was Marcus Schrenker.

Dave Smith is one of those pilots.

He flew for Delta for almost 29 years.

He's educated and well -trained.

But he'd be the first to admit that he has more money than financial savvy.

When he sits down with Marcus Schrenker, his financial unease seems to

disappear. It's funny how the mind works. You think you're above all this

The guy just flew it in an airplane you'd give your right arm to own. And

wearing the right shoes and the good Rolex.

Sits down and talks quietly and has all the answers.

Wow, I'm glad to have him on my team, you know?

Yeah.

Tranker signed Smith up, but there are many more Dave Smiths to put on his

card. There were seven -figure crops to be harvested out of this

retiring group of guys, and all he had to do was get here, get among them.

So he literally moved to Atlanta.

Next on American Greed, when Marcus Schrenker hits financial turbulence, his

clients get white -knuckled and want to know, where's their money?

You've been charged those surrender charges. That money is gone forever.

In 2005, Marcus Schrenker's financial planning business is taking off.

He's tapped into a rich vein, managing the retirement funds of former airline

pilots. Marcus had a relationship. He could go down there and they could talk

about things that his clients loved, and they were Delta pilots.

And then, of course, hey, I'm an investment representative.

According to Schrenker, he has almost 500 clients, and he's managing well over

$6 million.

Business is so good, Schrenker moves his family to Atlanta, a city teeming with

retired Delta Airlines pilots.

I think he went down there because there was money to be made. Schrenker pitches

himself as a low -key guy with a cautious approach to investing.

He gives all his clients the same pitch.

He doesn't charge commissions, only a standard 1 % management fee.

And he puts their money into low -risk mutual funds.

Mike Kenney has more than half a million dollars with Schrenker. It was the

majority of my net worth, both liquid and in, you know, like retirement type

stuff.

He proclaimed he was going to put it in very safe funds that had good return

values on them.

And that was what attracted me.

Dave Smith, the retired Delta pilot, has given Schrenker $1 million to invest.

Smith says Schrenker used fear to lure him in, talking doom and gloom.

We've got the Olympics coming up, and we've got a presidential election coming

up. Our intelligence department tells us there could be a major terrorist attack

in any one of those things.

If that happens, this market is going to go through the floor.

He then offers a financial security blanket.

We've got to do something to protect your money.

I've got a plan I think I can get you in. We heard last it was closed, but I

think I can get you in this.

So now you're just in a total panic mode.

What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

Well, it turns out, under the wire, we're going to be able to get into this

investment. Schrenker describes the investment as a type of mutual fund that

will never make less than 3 % a year.

Even in the worst of times, Smith hands over his entire nest egg.

The catastrophes never materialize.

Instead, the stock market slowly climbs in 2003 and 2004.

But Schrenker is making money.

His clients are, too.

And they're all getting along famously.

Dave Smith lives in Roswell, Georgia, a city steeped in Civil War history.

And few people know that that Confederate gray was actually called

And they made those uniforms right here in town.

So when he and the kids and wife came down here, we would go and look at this

stuff. And there's beautiful streams with the waterfalls and the ruins, you

know, old Civil War ruins.

And so we did a lot together.

But friends also notice quirks about his personality.

For instance, he has almost no sense of humor.

Jokes would just ding by Marcus like he was in a battlefield.

But he was the lucky guy in the battlefield because nothing ever hit

And he actually had a fake laugh.

And everybody in the room would be dying laughing over something going on, and

he'd be ha -ha -ha -ha -ha.

Schreiker also seems obsessed with his personal appearance.

I've got a little beagle puppy. I defy anybody to come up with anything cuter

than a brand -new little beagle puppy.

stands up and puts her little feet on his pants. And he jumped back, brushed

pants off, and he said, I'll never forget it. He goes, this is a $2 ,000

And I thought, yeah, and that's a $200 puppy. What do I care about your suit?

Smith shrugs it off as harmless vanity.

I think it came down to the fact that people trusted him. There was a level of

trust that he was able to gain very quickly.

A real talent for him.

But his clients are about to learn the consequences of trusting Marcus

Schrenker.

Trouble appears in 2006, when Dave Smith opens his annual statement from the

company Schrenker has his money invested with.

Smith's statement reveals that he's been charged more than $66 ,000 in surrender

fees.

Panicked, he calls Schrenker.

What is that?

Well, that's taxes.

Taxes? What do you mean, taxes?

Well, Dave, you know, you...

pay taxes on everything. It's just the way it is.

Finally, I began to realize he is stammering. I decided to heck with it.

calling the company.

He's shocked to learn that he's locked into a 25 -year annuity, and Schrenker

has withdrawn 30 % of his money, $300 ,000, after only a year.

The $66 ,000 is in taxes. It's surrender fees for early withdrawal.

Smith confronts Schrenker.

Who told you that? He said.

A woman by the name of, I believe her name is Christy.

She goes, Dave, she's just a clerk. She doesn't know what this is. She thinks

that you're an off -the -street investor.

This thing is an institutional investment.

There are no surrender charges.

Look, I'll clear it up.

I'll call her. Well, maybe I should call her back. No, no, I'll take care of it.

I'll clear it up. And so I talked to her.

It's fine.

They're putting the money back. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it.

Oh, wow, okay, that's great.

Smith says he later called the insurance company again to confirm that the $66

,000 had been refunded.

The response was not the one he's hoping to hear.

Mr. Smith, you're in this annuity, it's this way. I don't know what this guy is

telling you, but this is what it is.

And you've been charged those surrender charges. That money is gone forever.

And it gets worse.

Smith says without his knowledge, Schrenker has already moved $100 ,000 of

nest egg into yet another annuity.

Every time he takes money out of one of Smith's annuities, Smith is hit with a

big penalty, and Schrenker is on a roll.

According to the Indiana State's investigators, he's moving Smith's money

like a pinball game.

Every time he does it, he makes at least a 13 % commission, and he does it over

and over again.

When we began to peel back the layers of what he had done to us in the fall of

06, we were sick. I mean, it was just a sickening feeling.

Every family member, as we were confronted with what he was doing,

believe it, even myself at first. It's like, I'm going, no, man, he wouldn't be

doing that to us.

I mean, it's Marcus.

He's a good guy.

But yet, it became undeniable.

Kenny loses $40 ,000 in surrender charges alone.

He was certainly willing to do anything it took to improve his financial

situation at whatever cost.

All told, Schrenker is raked in almost a million dollars churning accounts,

leaving a wake of financial ruin in Atlanta.

For this southern group of clients, he's the equivalent of Civil War General

William T. Sherman.

All the way through our relationship, and I mean literally till the day we

parted, and even after that.

He swore that he never made any commission on any product.

And when our entire family terminated our relationship with him, that's when

began to move back up to Indianapolis. He thought that the writing was on the

wall for Atlanta.

Next on American Greed, investigators say Schrenker starts a new scam.

But will his past catch up with him?

Looking back on my relationship with Marcus, it was going to take jail to

him.

Marcus Schrenker, a pilot and money manager, has beaten a hasty retreat from

Atlanta.

His clients, primarily a group of retired pilots, say they have discovered

Schrenker was churning their retirement accounts.

He moves their money from account to account, breaking in nearly a million

dollars in commissions and causing his clients to lose hundreds of thousands of

dollars in early withdrawal fees.

Schrenker moves his family back to their original home, an upscale suburb of

Indianapolis called Geist.

Tom Britt is a friend of Schrenker's and the publisher of a local newsletter.

He says Schrenker celebrates his return by building a massive home on the Geist

Reservoir. It was almost a PR spot, the rebranding of Marcus Schrenker in a lot

of respects, because there had been a lot of talk.

Rumors had made their way around the lake.

It's almost like he went through a deep freeze over the winter, and he's coming

back, and now he wanted to kind of reinvent himself.

And Tranker's experience in Atlanta has not slowed him down.

He still dreams of big money.

He came to me one day and said, you know, there's like $14 billion of wealth

Geist, and I want to get as much of that under management as I can.

I think he just realized that he had some connections, he knew some people.

People knew him. I think he saw that as a fertile ground to set up shop.

In 2008, Schrenker adds another investment firm to his family of

the Heritage Wealth Management umbrella.

He calls it the Icon Group.

Promising sound financial planning, the Icon Group claims to have offices in

Singapore, Sao Paulo, and London, among other cities.

In reality, there's only one office in a strip mall in Indianapolis.

His base companies were Heritage Wealth Management and Heritage Insurance

Management. And he combined them into a group called the Icon Group.

I find it rather ironic, Icon.

Sometimes the name says it all.

Under the Icon name, Schrenker starts talking a new product, something he

the Euro Fund.

Schrenker tells investors that with the dollar in a steady decline, There's

money to be made investing in European currency.

He would contact his clients and advise them what a great investment the euro

would be and that the euro was going to be very, very strong and it was a great

business opportunity.

Before long, Schrenker has a million and a half of clients' money in the euro

fund, but his past is close behind.

Schrenker's victims of the Atlanta churning scam have no intention of

without a fight.

When we began to investigate what can we do about this, you begin to see that

lawsuits are very expensive, very uncertain, and hard to do. So what can

to keep him from doing that kind of thing to other people like us?

Because we felt like he was going to keep on doing it.

We went to the Georgia Insurance Commission.

They were, in a word, totally worthless.

Totally worthless.

Well... Good luck.

What are we going to do? What are we going to do?

Indiana. What about Indiana Insurance Commission?

In the summer of 2007, Mike Kenney, Dave Smith, and several other retired pilots

approached the Indiana Department of Insurance.

They provide investigator Lisa Harpenau with evidence documenting Schrenker's

churning scam.

It was...

five - or six -page complaint that referenced attachments and had notes on

attachments and basically walked me through everything that they had went

through. I knew that, okay, I think I've got some evidence now to file a

statement of charges.

That's exactly what Harper now does.

And now Schrenker is obliged to respond.

The response has definitely raised some red flags with me. One of his responses

said, I didn't know there were surrender fees associated with these annuities.

And I knew right there, either he's lying or he doesn't know how to sell an

annuity because...

Any agent that sells annuities knows there's going to be surrender fees

involved. Schrenker plays his best hand.

His clients say he delays, drags his feet, and postpones meetings with

regulators. He has good reason for his tactic.

His Eurofund deal is paying off, and he's expanding his client base.

Marker Schrenker, the sky's the limit.

There we go. He's going to get lined up big. He had what's called an unlimited

routine.

And basically it's a very high G routine that has a lot of gyroscopic recession

maneuvers in it.

People will look at my routine and they'll go, how can an airplane possibly

that?

People are fascinated by flight. They love to come out, especially kids.

And there's nothing more wholesome than a parent bringing out their kids for an

air show.

Give Harkin Breaker a hand.

I'll tell you what, I couldn't have done that.

Always eager to impress, Schrenker's life in Geist is as choreographed as his

aerial routines.

He would fly them in his airplane, show them his house out on Geist Reservoir,

and appeared to have all the trappings of success.

And that would play some factor in our victims deciding to invest their money

with him.

of what he had to do was live large to convince people that he's

made it. You can trust him. He's doing something right, isn't he?

Look at the car, look at the house, look at the plane.

He's doing something right.

That was part of it.

But I think he was always just trying to stay one step ahead of it.

But scratch the surface, and it all falls apart.

The $1 .2 million house?

It's mortgage to the hilt.

Cars, lanes, they're all on banknotes. When you look at all the trappings of

success, it's much like a Hollywood set.

Once you look behind that facade, you can see that it's really empty.

And a storm is brewing.

Lisa Harpino's investigation is growing.

And Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jeff Waymiller is asking questions about

To him, Schrenker is starting to look like a Hoosier Bernie Madoff.

He generates clients' Eurofund statements with an online investment

Every chart, every return, every number is pure fabrication.

Marcus would manipulate the numbers for this Euro account to show, not only to

create the account, but also to show false returns.

And, like a mini -Madoff, he spends clients' money as though it were his

Well, the paper trail, according to the probable cause, pretty much ends when he

was making personal payments on items such as his house, his cars, his

Waymiller and local police prepare for a search warrant of Schrenker's home and

office. But Schrenker is oblivious to the impending storm.

His life in Geist is a Midwest version of Margaritaville.

We live on a part of Geist Reservoir called Cocktail Cove, and it's known as

being kind of the place where a lot of the boats congregate in the summer.

We could have literally 200 boats in our backyard tied up on a Saturday and

sometimes Sundays.

He had a boat. What was unique about Marcus and his boat is he had a very

big boat, but he also had this big floating trampoline.

On any given Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you would see Marcus pull his

out, and he would actually pull the trampoline behind him, and kids would

up to it, and they'd jump on it, and they'd jump off the trampoline, jump

on. And so that was kind of a playful thing that he would do on the weekends.

But as the summer of 08 turns to fall, the markets implode.

And so does Marcus Schrenker.

When American Greed returns, Schrenker takes a dangerous flight.

to escape this collapsing world.

Some

huge

companies in bad shape. There's fresh evidence tonight that much of the world

in this with us.

In late December of 2008, amid the global economic meltdown, the world of

manager Marcus Schrenker is collapsing.

Insurance regulators are closing in.

They say they know that Schrenker has churned client accounts, costing them

hundreds of thousands of dollars in surrender fees.

And now, criminal charges are in the works.

Investigators believe his Euro fund is all smoke and mirrors.

And Schrenker is pocketing clients' money.

So someone would agree to invest with him based on skills that he represented,

returns that he was supposedly getting other clients, and he would usually take

that money and buy a home with it, buy a plane with it, buy nice cars with it.

On December 31, 2008, a search warrant is served on Schrenker's home.

Well, the search warrant authorized agents of the Secretary of State's

with the assistance of the Indiana State Police to seize any business records,

computers, any information that would document the business activities of the

heritage companies and ICON.

His wife, Michelle, is home.

Tranker is gone.

He's in Key West, shacked up with a girlfriend.

It seems his business isn't the only thing that's crumbling.

The day before the search warrant, Michelle files for divorce.

The perfect family was breaking up.

Yes. Yes. And certainly Marcus Schrenker left the impression that he had the

perfect family with the perfect kids.

However, he also had a woman on the side, his girlfriend.

Schrenker's future looks bleak.

Divorce, financial ruin, and prison.

My personal opinion is that he was a desperate man who'd lost everything, and

devised what he thought was an ingenious plan.

In early January 2009,

Schrenker plots an exit strategy.

His scheme involves a plane, a parachute, and a motorcycle.

On January 10th, Schrenker drives from Indiana to the small town of

Harpersville, Alabama.

The most interesting aspect about Harpersville, Alabama, is the fact that

lies directly between Indiana and the Gulf of Mexico.

He's towing a trailer.

Inside is a red Yamaha motorcycle.

When he reached Harpersville, he sought out a public storage unit, contacted the

owner, and told this owner that he wanted to store his motorcycle for a few

days.

Schrenker stashes his motorcycle in Harpersville and returns home to

The next day, on January 11, 2009, he tells friends and family he's flying

to Destin, Florida, where his dad lives.

The pressure must be intense because Schrenker is acting erratically.

Before he boards his plane, he texts a friend with a bizarre message.

Well, I can just tell you what he texted to his friend, that he was going to

visit his father in Florida before entering into the witness protection

according to his text. That night... A clearly stressed out Schrenker is caught

on camera doing donuts at the airstrip where he keeps his plane.

Moments after this is filmed, the troubled man who claims to be entering a

witness protection program boards his plane and takes off.

He's headed south.

Two hours into the flight, high above Huntsville, Alabama, Schrenker sends a

Mayday call.

He said that his cabin had lost pressure, that the windshield was

that he was losing consciousness.

He then said something about blood being on the windshield, and that's the last

communication Marcus Schrenker had with the Coast Guard.

Alarm that the pilot is dead or disabled, the Navy dispatches two F

The fighter pilots pull alongside Schrenker's plane in midair. The door is

The cockpit is dark.

The pilot is gone.

Two F -15 jet fighters were dispatched to intercept the airplane.

Once the pilots arrived, they were able to report that there were no lights on

and they weren't able to see any movement within the cabin.

Even without its pilot, the Piper Malibu continues its path south, but the

stairs are down, creating drag.

The plane is quickly running out of gas.

Just across the Alabama state line, the plane crashes into a swamp.

just a quarter mile from a subdivision.

After the airplane crashed, rescue workers were very quickly on site and

able to determine that there were no remains of the pilot. From that, they

inferred that the pilot had jumped.

They're exactly right.

Schrenker has jumped to 10 ,000 feet above central Alabama.

The plan was to parachute into a sod farm, but he misses the mark and lands

swamp near the Coosa River.

Schranker wades out and walks to the nearest house.

We are a sod farm in Harpersville.

I think Marcus meant to land somewhere in this general area. As you can see,

it's a good big target for somebody who knew what they were doing, which

obviously Marcus didn't. He wound up landing actually on the other side of

river, and probably those were the lights that he could see at that home

He just approached those lights, hoping he could get help.

He knocks on the door, soaking wet and covered in mud.

He says he was canoeing in a nearby river.

He capsized and lost his boat.

The homeowner is skeptical and calls police.

He then offers Schrenker a ride to the nearest convenience store.

You know, it was wintertime, and the story, according to this man, just

contrived. You know, sounded like he'd made it up. Police arrive and talk to

Schrenker, who surprisingly gives them his real name.

And he gave him the same story, basically, that he'd been separated from

friends, canoeing. So the officer ran his driver's license on the National

Computer Database. Information was there, but no red flags, no warrants,

to show that anybody, any agency, law enforcement agency, had any interest in

him. At Schrenker's request, police escort him to a hotel in Harpersville.

Security footage records Schrenker checking in, but Schrenker never intends

stay the night.

Instead, he jogs half a mile down the road to the storage facility where his

motorcycle is waiting.

And he drives off into the night.

The plane crashed Sunday night.

The next day, the plane crashed and the missing pilot are worldwide news.

Alabama authorities say that after checking into a hotel under a different

Shrinker put on a black cap and moved into the woods, his plane hitting the

ground miles away, empty.

In Harpersville, one of Chief Latimer's deputies remembers seeing Schrenker in

town. U .S. Marshals are called.

With the information received from Birmingham that he was now operating a

Yamaha motorcycle, we had something go on.

When American Greed returns, can the feds find a desperate Marcus Schrenker

before he really does himself in?

In Florida, a plane piloted by money manager Marcus Schrenker has crashed,

there's no body.

Many believe Schrenker faked his death.

He was flying one of his planes to Florida Sunday when authorities say they

a fake distress call when his turboprop then crashed without him in it.

He didn't crash his airplane.

One thing, you know, the guy had no sense of humor. If his lips are moving,

lying, but he was a good pilot.

David Smith is one of many retired commercial pilots who were scammed by

Schrenker. Smith says he has good reason to be cynical.

Well, then the story began to unfold, and it was like, oh, my God.

And it was tempered with a little bit of laughter.

I knew he was going to do something.

I knew he was going to do something, and he did.

On January 13, 2009, less than two days after Schrenker's disappearance,

His friend and confidant, Tom Britt, is glued to the TV, asking the questions so

many are asking.

Where is Marcus Schrenker?

Then Britt checks his email.

I hit send and receive on my email, and an email pops up in the subject line.

It says, from Marcus.

Looking for anyone to hear his side of the story, Schrenker reaches out to

someone he thinks might be a sympathetic ear.

And he's trying to pass all the blame off onto someone else.

And then he talks about his wife, and he says, you know, she divorced me, I

deserved it. He says, this is the last time I'm going to embarrass my family

like this.

And he said, by the time you read this, I'll be gone.

Take care, Marcus.

My immediate thought was, I've got to get this to the police.

The U .S. Marshals are already hot on his trail.

Recovered from the wreckage of the airplane was the U .S.

campground directory with the Florida page ripped out. We knew he was heading

Florida. We were able to determine how far he would have been able to travel,

and our operational plan was to check all the campgrounds along the I -10

Amazingly, the marshals strike gold at the very first campsite they check, this

KOA campground outside of Tallahassee.

The manager recognizes Schrenker as a guy who checked in last night, bought a

bundle of firewood and a six -pack of beer.

She directs the marshals to his tent.

As we approached the tent and gave the verbal commands, he complied. He stuck

both hands out of the open door flap.

At that time, we saw the wound to his left wrist and saw the large amount of

blood on his clothing on the front of the tent, and we knew we had a medical

situation. Inside the tent, there's a pool of blood.

Schrenker is in and out of consciousness, muttering, die, die.

With authorities closing in, he has used a razor blade to slash his wrists.

He has suffered massive blood loss, but doctors are able to save him just in

time.

In my opinion, seeing him that night, the condition he was in, the two

injuries that he inflicted to himself, I don't think he would have made it

through tonight.

If Marcus Schrenker was looking for an easy way out, he won't get it.

As soon as he recovers here, he's already facing felony charges of fraud

federal charges for causing his own plane crash.

Federal charges of intentionally crashing a plane are now added to a

list of financial charges.

And then there is the question of his wife, Michelle.

She holds the title of chief financial officer in Schrenker's companies.

A cloud of suspicion falls on her head.

That's what investigators have been very interested in. How much of a role did

she play?

Shortly after her husband's arrest, Michelle Schrenker goes on the Today

talk about her role in the company.

When you hear about it, how much did you know, how aware were you of the

severity of the financial problems?

I had limited duties there.

All I did was help my husband out.

I payrolled and I did paid bills. That's all I did.

You were a bookkeeper?

I was a bookkeeper, but it wasn't what he wanted for the image, for the

marketing. And, Michelle, are you in contact with your husband? Have you

to him in jail?

I have. He has made his apologies to me.

But right now, I'm just focusing on my kids and on what I need to do next.

Michelle Schrenker faces no criminal charges.

I think the focus now, to be honest with you, is on him.

And I think the...

Investigators in Indiana feel that if they're going to be charged against her,

then so be it, and they're patient. They're willing to be patient and wait.

Federal authorities filed two charges against him. One, the intentional

destruction of an aircraft. The other one was issuing a false distress call.

And so we waited patiently until the federal court had finished with him.

Schrenker pleads guilty to the charges relating to the crash and receives four

years in federal prison.

As for the financial crimes...

Investigators believe Schrenker cleared more than $2 million between his annuity

scam and the Eurofund scam.

Looking back, Dave Smith realizes he should have seen the warning signs when

investment advisor became one of his closest friends.

The red flags that I should have seen were the ones that you really wouldn't

think about seeing, and that's what makes the scheme work.

You know, you've heard the expression, there's nothing new under the sun. There

isn't. This is the same old trick. You know, you make...

Friends with somebody. Your buddies, your pals.

Hey, let's go get a beer.

Let's do this, let's do that. Before you know it, the guy's running around with

your wife.

Dave Smith, Mike Kenney, and the other victims contact the companies whose

insurance was sold by Schrenker, asking for their money back.

At first, their pleas fall on deaf ears.

The money was acquired fraudulently. Not their fraud, but it was acquired

fraudulently. They drug their feet, they fought.

Suddenly, after refusal, refusal, refusal, suddenly said, fine, here's

money. Tonight he faces federal charges. In an ironic twist of fate, Schrenker's

high -profile escape benefits his churning victims.

His shenanigans with his airplane did us the biggest favor he could possibly do.

Those companies did not want to be associated with such a bad news story,

bad agent who was obviously...

caught guilty in doing such bad things.

So they were very eager to cut their ties with him and with us in light of

he had done as their agent.

And one after another, the phone call would come in.

Thank God I just got a check.

I can't believe it. I just got a check.

The check came in today and we kept it up and we kept it up and we kept it up

until everybody got their money back.

Victims of Schrenker's Eurofund scam are not as lucky.

In that case, there are no insurance companies to cover the losses.

He had a very lavish lifestyle that required a lot of money to maintain.

As far as we can tell, Mr. Shrinker was spending the money as quickly as he was

taking it.

Shrinker is scheduled to stand trial in Indiana in 2010.

He's facing multiple criminal charges, including nine counts of fraudulent sale

of securities.

He is charged with 11 classy felonies.

If the court were to sentence him to all the counts and run them consecutively

to their maximum, he could serve up to 88 years.

Local NBC reporter Chris Proffitt of WTHR has a chance to speak with Marcus

Schrenker while he's behind bars in Indianapolis.

He does not take any responsibility for the loss of money.

He said through a disclosure, these people knew exactly the risk that they

taking. He never once said that I took money that didn't belong to me.

He said these were legitimate losses in his words.

So he doesn't take responsibility for any of that, and to this day maintains

hasn't stolen anything from anyone.

Marcus could be the friendliest guy.

He's given me handfuls of gifts.

Always there to take you places.

Offers to, hey, I'm on my way. We're going to go to the football game

And I liked him.

But the bad side of him was he knew if he could just get his hands on money, he

could be somebody.

And I think that maybe there's that element for Marcus. Marcus wants to be

somebody.

He's a story.

He is a story.