NOBLESVILLE, Ind. — A former money manager facing fraud charges acknowledged that the evidence indicates he was trying to fake his own death when he parachuted from his private plane that later crashed in a Florida swamp.
Marcus Schrenker told The Times of Munster in a jailhouse interview for a Sunday story that "all the data leads to (that) conclusion." He didn't specify what "data" he meant.
Schrenker, who previously claimed he had suffered memory loss due to an injury in the crash, said he remembered the incident clearly now.
"It's hard for me to believe that I did something so dangerous. Somebody could have been killed other than me," he said. "I was running from something. It looks very obvious that I was trying to leave the world for a short time."
The Merrillville native is being held in jail in the Indianapolis suburb of Hamilton County, where he awaits trial on 11 felony charges alleging that he bilked friends, family members and other investors of more than $1 million. A judge has entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. A court hearing is scheduled for later this month to determine his trial date.
He was sentenced in August to four years in federal prison on charges stemming from the Florida crash. He also is named in more than a half-dozen lawsuits and has judgments against him totaling millions of dollars.
Schrenker was arrested at a Florida campground in January 2009, two days after officials say he put his plane on autopilot and bailed out over Alabama to flee personal and financial problems. The plane crashed about 200 miles away. He started his flight in Anderson, where he stored his plane in a Municipal Airport hangar.
He has claimed he was under psychiatric care and on medication for more than a year beforehand. He said he had been mentally incompetent due to stress and a prescription drug problem.
"I was a very pompous, arrogant, self-centered man," Schrenker said. "This is not the legacy I want to leave for my family."
He told The Times that his investors' losses were due to an overwhelmed office and the Wall Street collapse. "If anything, we're guilty of bad record keeping," he said.
He said he had acknowledged responsibility to his former clients and told them he would try to help them recoup their losses.
Jeff Wehmueller, administrative chief deputy prosecutor in Hamilton County, said Schrenker hadn't admitted guilt in the letter to his clients, but accepted moral responsibility for their losses.
"I am just really embarrassed and really sorry for what the clients are going through," Schrenker said. "I'm very concerned. It seems like no one's concerned about the clients."
Wehmueller said the investors were "all we care about."
"That's why the secretary of state's office had established a receivership in the first place," he said. Indiana authorities had the assets of Schrenker and his estranged wife, Michelle, placed in a court-controlled receivership.
Michelle Schrenker, who filed for divorce in 2008, said, "Me and my kids are just trying to move on."
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