More Impressive Financial Fugitives, Please

Wealthy people on the lam can't put on a good caper anymore

So this guy Marcus Schrenker finds himself in a terrible predicament: as a "money manager" he has bilked his clients out of untold dollars, and they are getting antsy, plus his wife wants a divorce. The answer, if it were the 1980s, is you would flee to Switzerland and wait for Bill Clinton to pardon you in 18 years.

But these are different, sadder, shabbier times, and even our fugitive financiers are kind of lame.

Instead of slipping off to exotic Monaco or some unincorporated island in the South Pacific, Marcus Schrenker crashed his plane in a Florida swamp.

As everybody knows by now, he bailed out of his little plane somewhere over Alabama, claiming that the windshield had imploded and he was covered in blood. (The plane continued on to Florida without him.) He later turned up at a store in Childersburg, Alabama with, uh, damp shins, saying he had been in a canoeing accident, and was escorted by the police to a motel.

Because of course that is what you do when you are a policeman and you find some weirdo wearing flight goggles who says he has been in a "canoeing accident": you take them to some random motel.

After arriving at the motel, Schrenker executed the awesomest part of his plan: he pulled on a black hat and ran into the woods.

And he might have disappeared forever, had wily federal agents not found him later in a campground in northern Florida. It looks like he tried to kill himself by slashing a wrist, but he ultimately failed at that, too.

America, what has become of our devilish financial fugitives? Have we no respectable robber barons anymore? Do we not deserve a higher caliber of criminal fat-cat, somebody who will put in the hard work of purchasing multiple plane tickets, hiring impostors, forging documents, and performing the other myriad tasks associated with planning a proper caper, with dignity?

Instead we get this sad little story about swamps and canoes and half-hearted fakery. You know we've hit on lean times when even our wicked financiers turn out to be criminal amateurs.

Sara K. Smith writes for Wonkette when she's not moonlighting as a cat burglar.

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