US businessman who 'died' in plane crash found alive

The US businessman who faked his own death in a plane crash has been found in Florida.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, who parachuted from his plane shortly before it went down, then fled on a motorbike, is now in custody in Gadsden County, northern Florida.

The investment adviser from Indiana, whose personal and business life was in meltdown, disappeared on Sunday after radioing from his Piper Malibu, as he flew from his Indiana home to Florida, that he was in trouble. His windshield had caved in, he said, and his face was plastered in blood.

Military jets scrambled to intercept the plane found the door open and the cockpit dark. The plane eventually crashed in the Florida panhandle but there was no sign of Mr Schrenker's body.

Over 200 miles away in Alabama, police officers picked up a man carrying pilots' goggles and wet from the knees down. His Indiana drivers' licence was in the name of Marcus Schrenker but the officers believed his claim that he had been in a canoeing accident, and drove him to a motel.

From there, he made his way to a storage unit where he'd hidden a red motorcycle and he sped off into the countryside in what investigators say was a desperate bid to escape a messy divorce and an investigation into his firm, which had been accused of a multi-million-dollar fraud.

Clients of his companies Heritage Wealth Management Inc., Heritage Insurance Services Inc. and Icon Wealth Management claimed he had stolen millions of dollars of the savings they had given him to invest for them.

Two days before he disappeared, Mr Schrenker had buried his adored stepfather and suffered a half million dollar loss in the federal court. The day before he got into his plane, his wife Michelle filed for divorce, telling friends he had been having an affair.

After his disappearance, Mr Schrenker emailed a neighbour, suggesting the crash was an accident, and blamed oxygen deprivation for his decision to leave the plane.

"Hypoxia can cause people to make terrible decisions and I simply put on my parachute and survival gear and bailed out," he wrote.

"I embarrassed my family for the last time," he added."By the time you read this I'll be gone."

TimesOnline.co.uk

14.01.2009