Auburn pilot warns missing pilot should be behind bars

Investigators now have more proof the Indiana businessman who parachuted into Childersburg Sunday night was trying to fake his own death and escape financial problems.

Officers have discovered Marcus Schrenker stashed a motorcycle in a Harpersville storage unit Saturday, not far from where his parachute landed Sunday night.

Schrenker’s clothes were discovered in a dumpster on the storage unit’s grounds.

Meanwhile, Schrenker’s legal troubles keep piling up:

Tuesday morning the state of Indiana charged missing Schrenker with two counts of felony fraud for operating without an investment license.

The Coast Guard wants him to pay for the cost of the rescue team that responded to his fake distress call, and Florida is considering charging him with several crimes related to abandoning an aircraft in flight.

Schrenker seemed to have a postcard life…friends like Tom Britt in Indiana highly respect him.

Britt is the last person to have had contact with Schrenker.

Britt says Monday night around 7:30, Shrenker emailed him that this whole situation ..the criminal charges, the crashing plane - is all just a misunderstanding.

“He wanted to set the record straight about how the plane crashed. That he would never take a plane and just let it run off and hit someone’s house. He feels terrible about that,“ says Britt, who turned the email over to police.

“That’s all baloney - that’s all fabricated,“ says Joe Mazzone, a former client of Schrenker.

Mazzone is a retired Delta pilot who lives in Auburn, Alabama and has a different image of Schrenker.

Mazzone turned his retirement settlement over to Schrenker’s firm in 2005.

Mazzone quickly became suspicious his money was being mishandled, so he started investigating and was shocked at what he found.

“Forgery on documents - signatures - my wife’s and mine on documents that obviously were not ours,“ says Mazzone.

Mazzone says Schrenker defrauded him out of thousands, buying annuities for his portfolio that paid commissions as high as 18%— without permission…then disguising them. 

Mazzone fired Schrenker and alerted Indiana investigators.
He’s been helping them build a felony fraud case against Schrenker.

“If he goes behind bars, I hope he never comes out, so he can’t do this again to anybody else,“ says Mazzone.