Flying high in Cocktail Cove

In the early morning hours of Monday, Jan. 12, 2009, at the big house on Cocktail Cove, Michelle Schrenker tried to focus. Her estranged husband's plane, she's just been told, had crashed in a Florida swamp.

But the plane was empty.  No Marcus.

Michelle Schrenker: It'd been a roller coaster.

But hundreds of miles to the south, investigators were finally sorting out the bizarre details. Those sonic booms and flares some people reported near Pensacola overnight were from the F-15 fighters which had scrambled to take a look at Marcus' unresponsive plane.

Sgt. Scott Haines: We find out from the military pilots that were up there, that when they flew along next to this aircraft, that the doors were already open. And the cockpit appeared dark and empty, they said.

A pilotless plane? It sounded too weird, too eerie, to be true. Then, more surreal news.

Michelle Schrenker: The colonel got a call and I said, “Well, did you find him?”  And he said, “Yeah, he's alive. And apparently he parachuted out.”

Parachuted out? It seemed too far-fetched. But according to federal authorities, the night before, at about 2,000 feet, above Alabama, Marcus jumped out the door of his plane and pulled the rip cord. A pilot who abandons a perfectly healthy airplane?

What other conclusion but this:  Marcus Schrenker must have tried to fake his own death. Then, waiting at home, Michelle got some news: he'd been spotted.

Michelle Schrenker: He went to a house, and told 'em, he was in a canoeing accident. And I was dumbfounded.

But it was Marcus. Sopping wet from the knees down, he'd made it to a highway, hitched a ride to a motel. Then, he took off on that red motorcycle, which he'd stashed away two days earlier; he'd stored it near the motel. And a manhunt was on.

Michelle Schrenker: I didn't know if they were going to arrest him, shoot him, you know, what was going to happen.

At this KOA campground near Tallahassee, a motorcyclist  pulled in a few hours later.

Carolyn Hastings: Real friendly. Asked for a tent site. Needed electricity. I assumed he had a laptop with him, needed internet access.

Owner Caroline Hastings said the motorcyclist went online for awhile, then began to act quite strange. Back in Indiana, tom Britt was checking his messages.

Tom Britt: And I checked my e-mail and an e-mail pops up from Marcus Schrenker.

There it was: an e-mail from Marcus.

He wrote that he really did have a window implode in flight, said he lost consciousness. Said he still loved Michelle and how sorry he was for treating her so terribly. He also said, "I have embarrassed my family for the last time and by the time you read this, I'll be gone."

Keith Morrison: So do what you think?

Tom Britt: Well, my initial reaction was I have to assume the worst and he's really gonna take his life. I know the walls have been caving in around him. And the first thing I do is I call the police.

At the KOA campground, the next day, Caroline Hastings and her husband drove by the motorcyclist's tent.

Caroline Hastings: My husband pulled up on the golf cart, and noticed some red tinge on his tent, that he didn't see the night before.  So, he got an uneasy feeling.

The sheriffs came then.  The U.S. Marshals service, too.  They opened the tent. It was a ghastly sight.

Caroline Hastings: Blood. Lots of blood. Right around the time that the ambulance was pulling in, they walked over to say, “Yeah, he had sliced a wrist, and they didn't think he'd make it.”

It was Marcus. On the Internet the day before, he'd learned his plane crashed on land, had been found, identified. If he had tried to fake his death, he'd blown it. He was rushed by a flight for life helicopter to a nearby hospital.  He'd almost made good on the cryptic threat in the e-mail. While Marcus recovered, officials in Indiana were pursuing their case against him.

Lisa Harpenau: I would say he's the Madoff of Indianapolis.

Investigators say Marcus simply pocketed some of the money he was supposed to be investing for his clients. And there was more:

Lisa Harpenau: I looked at the documents, I looked at the evidence, and I thought, wow, if these allegations are true, we've got a serious situation here.

Investigator Harpenau had heard from Marcus' old pilot friends in Atlanta.

David Smith: When the light goes off, you realize, oh, my God, I've been had.

When Harpenau poured through the pilot’s documents, she found that Marcus had taken their investments, and shifted them from one annuity to another each time earning a handsome commission, and each time passing on huge fees to his unsuspecting pilot clients. It's a practice known as "churning."

Charles Kinney: We're talking about surrender fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lisa Harpenau: They'd find out their nest egg, which they've been working on for years, is dwindling. Quickly.

Investigators say Marcus' alleged wrongdoing is a perfect example of what's known as "affinity fraud."

Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State: You're gonna see it a lot in a bad economy.  It's not fraud by a stranger.  It's fraud by a family member, a church member, someone who runs in your social circles.

Michelle Schrenker: I mean all these things started coming in that I had no knowledge of. Just complete and utter shock. And all these things that I had no idea about.

Keith Morrison: It was a house of cards.

Michelle Schrenker: Yeah.

Keith Morrison: And you didn't know anything?

Michelle Schrenker: No. 

Even around Cocktail Cove, no one yet seems to know the extent of Marcus' alleged fraud. Or how many friends have been taken in.

Cindy Gooding: It's over $100,000.

Cindy Gooding was one of Marcus and Michelle's closest friends, godmother to their youngest child.  She and her husband say even they were ripped off by Marcus, the dashing young man they loved like a son.

Cindy Gooding: It's wrong. Who has the right to take anything from someone else they haven't earned? That's just wrong.

Earlier this year, Michelle Schrenker was left at the big house on the Cove with her three children. Along with all of Marcus' assets, her assets were frozen, too. And she says she's penniless.

Michelle Schrenker: I'm left holding a bag with everything.

Keith Morrison: And whether or not it's true, you feel like maybe that was his intent.

Michelle Schrenker: Yes.

But there was a bigger question: Did Michelle Schrenker just enjoy the proceeds, or was she in her husband's alleged schemes up to her eyeballs???

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