MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. marshals have arrested a pilot accused of parachuting out of his plane and letting it crash in an apparent attempt to avoid financial fraud prosecution by faking his death, an investigator said late on Tuesday.
The pilot, Marcus Schrenker, 38, was arrested late on Tuesday at a campsite in the north Florida town of Quincy, Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Sgt. Scott Haines said by e-mail.
Details of the arrest were sketchy and Haines could not confirm local media reports that Schrenker was hospitalized after cutting his wrists in an apparent suicide attempt.
Schrenker was the only person aboard the small plane that took off for Florida on Sunday from Anderson, Indiana.
Investigators said that as the plane flew over Alabama the pilot made a fake emergency call, then put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out.
The empty plane crashed in a swampy area a few hundred yards (meters) from several homes near the northwest Florida city of Milton. No one was injured and no structures were damaged, investigators said.
Schrenker parachuted safely to the ground near the Alabama city of Harpersville on Sunday night, got a police officer to give him a ride to a hotel and then fled, investigators said.
He had previously stashed a motorcycle near that hotel and got away before local police learned of the plane crash, police and local media reported.
Schrenker was wanted in Indiana on financial fraud charges alleging he misled consumers who invested money in his wealth management companies and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton, editing by Philip Barbara) Harpersville, Ala. —- An Atlanta investor who had entrusted money to an Indiana financial manager suspected of trying to fake his own death in a plane crash said Tuesday he had complained to state regulators that the man was unfairly charging high fees and pocketing the money.
The complaint was among signs that Marcus Schrenkers life was crumbling around him before he took off Sunday in his small plane, then apparently parachuted over Alabama, leaving the plane on autopilot to crash in Florida.
But the captivating three-day saga came to an end when authorities finally caught up to Schrenker in North Florida. Gadsden County Sheriffs Lt. Jim Corder said late Tuesday night that police there had Schrenker in custody.
The Indiana Department of Insurance had filed a complaint against Schrenker on behalf of seven investors last January that claimed he cost them more than $250,000 because he never told them they would face high fees to switch annuities. Investors said he cozied up to their families —- then betrayed them.
Weve learned over time that hes a pathological liar —- you dont believe a single word that comes out of his mouth, said Charles Kinney, a 49-year-old airline pilot from Atlanta who went to regulators on behalf of his parents, who had invested $900,000 of their life savings with Schrenker.
A hearing in the case had been scheduled for next week. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Schrenker arrested on fraud charges.
Kinney said Schrenker became so close to his parents that he even vacationed with them at their Georgia lake house. But he claims Schrenker never told his parents that a transaction to transfer their money to a deferred annuity would cost them more than $135,000 in surrender penalties. Later, his brother discovered $60,000 was missing from his father-in-laws account —- something he said Schrenker explained by saying the money was in complex financial statements.
Schrenkers disappearance perplexed authorities in three states as they scrambled to put together the pieces of what looked like an elaborate plan to escape financial doom. In the days before the crash, Schrenkers home and business had been searched by authorities probing his financial management businesses, his wife filed for divorce, his stepfather died and a court in Maryland entered a half-million-dollar judgment against him.
The mystery began Sunday night, when Schrenkers plane went down en route to Destin, Fla., from Anderson, Ind.
Schrenker had reported that the windshield imploded and that he was bleeding profusely, officials said.
After he stopped responding to air traffic controllers, military jets tried to intercept the plane. Noticing that the door was open and the cockpit was dark, they followed it until it crashed in a Florida bayou surrounded by homes. Investigators think Schrenkers plan was to bail out over Alabama and let the plane fly to the Gulf and crash in the water, slowing the investigation.
But the plane ran out of fuel first.
Police in Childersburg, Ala., southeast of Birmingham, said they picked up a man using Schrenkers Indiana drivers license and took him to a motel. The man was wet from the knees down and told the officers he had been in a canoe accident. emspeace war gaza israel hamas sderot
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israelis = CHILDREN KILLERSby belong2Mohammad1,712 views
@jayplayer94 LOL FUCK THE FAKENSTINAS :) fuck all you arab scum bags
MadMax82043 4 days ago
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jayplayer94 1 year ago
Let#s bomb israel to hell...... it's the home of zionists
idrispower 1 year ago
ha ha! who makes me laughing!
theese guns are from the us army in iraq!!!
but why not? lets blame israel!!!
hommeling 1 year ago
yes. Jews are the victors.
Mehecanogeesir 2 years ago
what the who that
MRMOON1 2 years ago
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junkerman321 3 years ago
اليهود هم المنتصرين
voltman999 3 years ago