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The Fishers insurance-and-securities broker who disappeared following a plane crash in Florida on Sunday left a trail of deceit dating back years before his latest legal and regulatory woes.
Marcus Schrenker, 38, faced final arguments next week in a regulatory proceeding the Indiana Department of Insurance’s consumer-protection division filed against him a year ago.
Investigators accused Schrenker of shifting numerous clients from one annuity to another, generating excessive surrender charges. They also accused him of misappropriation of money and other wrongdoing.
Authorities have said little about the investigation into Schrenker’s businesses: Heritage Wealth Management Inc., Heritage Insurance Services Inc. and Icon Wealth Management.
But Schrenker’s litany of legal troubles stretches to his teenage years in Porter County, where prosecutors charged him with a felony in 1989 after he was arrested for trying to sell stolen jewelry. The conviction later was dismissed and removed from his record, however, because he was charged as an adult when he allegedly committed the crime as a juvenile, according to his Florida broker’s report.
Florida makes complete investment broker background information available to the public.
The report also lists several complaints through the years brought by clients in various states, including Indiana, claiming fraud, negligence and other charges relating to Schrenker’s management of their investments.
Mark Maddox, a former Indiana securities commissioner and a securities lawyer at Maddox Hargett & Caruso PC in Fishers, represented a handful of investors who succeeded in winning financial settlements against Schrenker.
Maddox said he first lodged complaints to state regulators and county prosecutors in 2003.
“To me, [Schrenker] may be a mini Bernie Madoff because prosecutors had known for years that this is a bad guy doing bad things,” he said. “For whatever reason, no one ever decided to really throw the book at him. As a result, he was allowed to continue to function for four or five years and wreak more carnage.”
In 2003, in an attempt to avoid repaying clients, Schrenker sought bankruptcy in the U.S. District Court of Indianapolis. Officials dismissed the bankruptcy, though, when they determined he had committed perjury by lying about being unemployed and having no income.
He avoided prosecution but was directed by the judge to repay all his creditors. It was not immediately clear how much he owed.
Paul Gresk served as a trustee for the creditors and recalled Schrenker as a “narcissist and an egomaniac.”
Schrenker’s lavish lifestyle included luxury automobiles, two airplanes and a $4 million house on Geist reservoir – far removed the income he made as a cook and waiter in the early 1990s at Olive Garden, Pizza Hut and Red Lobster, jobs listed on his Florida broker’s report.
But his life lately appeared to be spiraling downward. He lost a half-million-dollar judgment against one of his companies, and his wife filed for divorce, on top of the possible securities violations.
Federal marshals this morning pressed their search for Schrenker, who they believe faked a distress call before parachuting form his plane over Alabama and disappeared on a motorcycle he had stashed in advance.
Authorities are trying to figure out if the plane crash and disappearing act is an attempt to fake his own death. The only sign of life from Schrenker came in an ominous e-mail he apparently sent to a neighbor, Tom Britt, that said the situation was a misunderstanding and added: “By the time you get this, I’ll be gone.”
Associated Press contributed to this story.
To see an AP Video report on this story, click here.
To see a YouTube video of Schrenker doing aerobatic stunts in 2000, click here.
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