Investment advisor on the run found in Florida

FWR Staff

14 January 2009

Pilot, motorcyclist, financial planner Shrenker is having a memorable week. UPDATE: U.S. Marshals apprehended Marcus Shrenker in a northern Florida campground this morning , according to media reports. He is said to have been found with one wrist badly cut, muttering the word "die," as he was apparently slipping into unconsciousness. His seemingly self-inflicted wound bound, he was airlifted to a hospital in Tallahassee, Fla. In addition to legal troubles with several of the companies whose investment and insurance platforms he used for his businesses, Indiana authorities' compliant that he unlawfully represented himself as a state-registered investment advisor, divorce proceedings, and a growing list of clients coming forward to say he's ripped them off, Shrenker faces federal charges related to calling in a false emergency from his airplane and for deliberately crashing that plane.

The following article was originally published on 13 January 2009.

Authorities in three states are beating the bushes for financial advisor Marcus Shrenker, who is believed to have attempted to fake his death in a bid to escape his legal and financial troubles.

Shrenker, CEO of Indianapolis-based Heritage Wealth Management until his Indiana registration as an investment advisor representative was revoked on 31 December, and an experienced pilot, called air-traffic authorities while en route from Indiana to Florida the other day to say that his windscreen had caved in, that he was bloody from broken glass and that he was losing control of the plane.

When Shrenker didn't respond to further queries from air-traffic control, military jets were sent up. The military pilots, who reported that the pilot-side door of Shrenker's single-engine Piper was ajar and the cockpit apparently empty, tracked the aircraft until it crashed into a swamp in the Florida panhandle near Alabama. No body was found at the crash. In addition, the plane's windshield wasn't damaged as Shrenker had described and there was no blood in evidence.

The great escape

Still, authorities mounted a search for Shrenker in the woods and bogs around the crash site.

Meanwhile, about 200 miles north of the Piper crash scene, police in Childersburg, Ala., came across a fellow who showed them Shrenker's I.D. as his own and said he'd been in a canoeing accident. The cops, who knew nothing of the search for Shrenker, took the stranger to a local hotel and left him. He booked into the hotel, paying by cash and using a name other than Marcus Shrenker. By the time Childersburg police figured out they might have a line on the guy their colleagues were looking for in Florida, the supposed canoeist had lit into the woods on foot, according to witnesses at the hotel.

Authorities are still looking for him in Florida, Alabama and Indiana. They now figure he parachuted from his plane shortly after making a bogus distress call. But they don't think he's still lurking in the woods. It seems he had a motorcycle stashed in a self-storage shed near Childersburg.

Last week a federal court in Maryland ordered Shrenker's Heritage Wealth Management to pay $533,564 to a cBaltimore-based insurance subsidiary of Old Mutual for "unjust enrichment" for not re-paying "unearned" commissions. Another insurance company is suing him for $1.4 million in a similar case.

In light of Shrenker's presumed flight, a judge in Indiana's Hamilton county yesterday ordered that Shrenker's assets and those of his wife Michelle Shrenker be frozen for 10 days pending a hearing.

Shrenker's wife filed to divorce him on 30 December.

The next day, Indiana state authorities raided Shrenker's home and business offices in connection with an investigation into possible securities fraud.

And now the criminal charges are coming in. As of today, Shrenker faces two charges in Indiana -- for conducting business as an investment advisor representative after his registration had been revoked. -FWR

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