Marcus Schrenker makes millions. He's a Wall Street money manager and a stunt pilot. But clients say he's a con man who had the country wondering for days whether he was dead or alive.

American Greed profiles a multi-million dollar story of deception!

Marcus Schrenker launches Heritage Wealth Management, a financial planning firm focused on low-risk investments. He's a money manager promising safe investments and good returns.

Schrenker's money management business grows. He marries, has kids and settles into the Geist neighborhood north of Indianapolis... an enclave of the city’s elite. He lives the good life and has money to fuel his passion for piloting planes.

Always one to hunt for new investment clients, Schrenker uses his love of aviation to make friends with some commercial pilots and offers to manage their family's retirement accounts.

Schrenker lures Mike Kinney, the brother of a pilot: "Very safe funds that had good return values... that was what attracted me. He proclaimed that we only put our clients in the best of the best. That was a term that was used quite a bit."

Kinney invests half a million dollars.

Schrenker claims he only makes money if his clients make money, taking the standard one percent management fee. But, he does the opposite of what’s promised. Rather than investing in mutual funds and charging no commissions, Schrenker puts money into one annuity after the next, racking up huge commissions and costing his clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in surrender fees.

Schrenker's scheme brings in lots of money, but he wants more. He hears rumors Atlanta-based Delta Airlines will be filing for bankruptcy. Thousands of pilots will be nudged into early retirement and given lump-sum payouts. -- Schrenker moves to Atlanta.

Pilot Dave Smith flew for Delta for almost 29 years: "There's nothing more scary than having seven figures of money and not knowing what to do with it. So I started asking around, 'Hey do you have a guy that's doing your money?' And one of my favorite co-pilots said, 'I would trust him with my kids. That's how much I trust this guy.' And I said, 'Who was that guy?' It was Marcus Schrenker."

Smith signs up and hands over his entire nest egg.

But in 2006, Dave Smith learns the consequences of trusting Marcus Schrenker. He's shocked to discover he’s locked into a 25-year annuity and Schrenker has withdrawn 30% of his money. Smith was charged $66-thousand in surrender fees for early withdrawal.

It gets worse. Smith learns his money is being moved from annuity to annuity. According to Indiana State investigators, Schrenker is moving Smith's money around like a pinball game. Every time he does, he makes at least a 13% commission.

Schrenker makes almost a million dollars churning accounts and leaves a wake of financial ruin in Atlanta. His clients demand to know what’s happened to their investments.

He leaves town and moves back to Indiana. But his victims have no intention of giving up without a fight. Several approach the Indiana Department of Insurance. They provide investigators with evidence documenting the scam.

Indiana Insurance Investigator Lisa Harpenau is on the case and contacts Schrenker:

Harpenau: "(His) responses definitely raised the red flags with me. One of his responses said, 'I didn’t know there were surrender fees associated with these annuities.' And I knew right there, either he's lying or he doesn’t know how to sell an annuity because any agent that sells annuities knows that there’s going to be surrender fees involved."

A storm is brewing. Insurance regulators are closing in and criminal charges are in the works.

Schrenker will soon face $9 million in judgments, a pending securities fraud trial, and a wife who files for divorce. Indiana authorities also believe he’s been running a second scam involving a fake security fund.

January 2009... the nation is reeling from the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. On Wall Street, the stock market is in a free fall. On Main Street, home prices are plummeting. Inside a million dollar home near Indianapolis, Schrenker is ignoring his clients’ panicked phone calls.

Schrenker takes a dangerous flight to escape his collapsing world. He plans a trip in his single-engine Piper Malibu plane. He's flying solo. Two hours into the flight, he sends out a distress call. The plane (pictured here) crashed in a wooded area near Milton, FL. Rescue workers find twisted wreckage, but there's no pilot. Is he dead or alive?

Marcus Schrenker’s crash and burn story unravels on TV screens around the world. The money manager purposefully parachutes out of the plane but U.S Marshalls are hot on the trail. They locate him at a campground near Tallahassee, FL, just in time to save him from a suicide attempt.

Marcus Schrenker later pleaded guilty to faking a distress call while attempting to fake his own death.

On Oct. 7 2010, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty in Hamilton Superior Court to securities fraud charges.

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