Citizen Scandal: Businessman Fakes Death In Plane Crash, Wanted By Authorities

A warrant has been filed in Indiana for the arrest of Marcus Schrenker, president of Heritage Wealth Management. On Sunday night, Schrenker was flying his plane when he made a mayday call to air traffic controllers, claiming his windshield was smashed and that he was bleeding. When military planes tried to intercept, they found the door open and the cockpit unattended. Authorities believe he leaped out of the plane in Alabama, leaving it to coast on autopilot for 200 miles before it ran out of fuel, and crashed in a Florida bayou.

Schrenker suffered a divorce, a court-imposed fine of $553,000, an arrest for financial fraud charges, and an investigation of his companies over potential embezzlement the week before his “accident.” A man using his ID was found Sunday and taken to a hotel by police in Childersburg, Alabama, but by the time they learned of the crash investigation, he had paid for the room in cash and escaped into the nearby woods. Police then discovered Schrenker had left a motorcycle and several saddlebags in a storage unit seven miles out of town days earlier. When they arrived, the motorcycle was gone and his clothes were found in a trash bin. Schrenker 2, cops 0!

Or is it? Schrenker’s neighbor claims to have received an e-mail from the fugitive Monday, inspired by inaccuracies in the media coverage. “Hypoxia [a lack of oxygen, presumbly caused by the busted screen] can cause people to make terrible decisions and I simply put on my parachute and survival gear and bailed out.” The message also claimed, “by the time you get this, I’ll be gone” which the neighbor took as a suicide note. But then, he didn’t know about the secret storage space in Alabama.

If the economy doesn’t change soon—and Schrenker isn’t caught—expect death faking to be the hottest trend among the financial elite in 2009.