An Indiana securities and insurance broker who apparently tried to fake his own death will spend the next 51 months in federal prison.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, of McCordsville, Ind., was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., for willfully damaging, destroying and wrecking his aircraft and willfully communicating a false distress message causing the U.S. Coast Guard, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Florida.

In addition to his prison time, Schrenker also must pay the Coast Guard $34,649 for the cost of their search and rescue effort and restitution to the lien holder of his aircraft, Harley Davidson Credit Corp., in the amount of $871,388.

Prior to crashing his Piper PA-46 plane in Santa Rosa County, Fla., Jan. 11, Schrenker, the owner of Heritage Wealth Management Inc., was facing financial and personal issues, according to published reports.

Schrenker’s wife filed for divorce on Dec. 30, 2008, and a day later, investigators with the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office seized items from his office and home regarding accusations of business impropriety, reports said.

Two days prior to the crash, Schrenker was ordered by a federal court to pay a $533,564 default judgment against Heritage Wealth to Baltimore, Md.-based OM Financial Life Insurance Co.

In 2007, OM Financial Life filed suit against Heritage Wealth alleging “unjust enrichment,” repeatedly failing to pay back “unearned” commissions regarding OM Financial Life Products, reports said. In addition to returning $433,314 in commissions, the judge also ordered the company to pay $33,852 in interest and attorney’s fees of $66,397.

A copy of a guilty plea entered into court June 5, outlines Schrenker’s planned scheme.

At the wake of his stepfather on Jan. 8, Schrenker obtained the license and credit card of his half-brother, subsequently purchasing a GPS unit and other items at a local sporting goods store. On Jan. 10, he drove to Harpersville, Ala., towing a trailer with his red Yamaha motorcycle, which he placed in a storage unit.

On the day of the crash, Schrenker told a friend “he had entered into business dealings with dangerous persons who now wanted to cause harm to him and as a result he was going to be leaving Florida that evening,” according to court documents.

Once in the air, Schrenker reported turbulence that shattered his windshield, telling an air traffic controller he was “bleeding profusely” and jumped from his aircraft, landing in the Florida panhandle via parachute. The plane crashed in a swampy wooded area a short time later, instigating a massive search and rescue mission by several state and federal authorities.

Schrenker later told a Childersburg, Ala., police officer he was in a canoeing accident and fled the area on his motorcycle. He was eventually arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service at a campground in Gadsden County, Fla.

Schrenker later confessed to special agents that he called in a false distress message and it was his intention that the aircraft crash into the Gulf of Mexico.

Indiana officials are expected to now extradite Schrenker, where he will face additional charges.