Non-lethal suicide Wealthy businessmen used ingenious methods to address the crisis just the idea of economic ruin begins rounds pockets

T he United States economic crisis has begun to hit the wealthy class, and some of its members try to desperate acts, including suicides and fake mock accident. And in his eagerness not to pay some debts millionaires are willing to cause untold tragedies.

Between December and January, there were three suicides of famous billionaires. On December 22, 2008, and after writing letters of farewell, Rene-Thierry Magon Villehuchet of suicide in his office in midtown Manhattan. The investor had lost 1,400 million U.S. dollars after depositing their fortunes and their clients in the hands of Bernard Madoff, who swindle their investors about 50,000 million dollars. In early January, Adolf Merckle, who lost his fortune in shares of Volkswagen, was thrown under a train. Then it was the turn of Patrick Rocca, who lost millions of pounds in the real estate market. Rocca waited to have his wife take their children to school, before sticking a bullet in the head.

There is a link between the Villehuchet Magon, and Merckle Rocca: none of the three U.S. investors is. Magon Villehuchet era of French, German Merckle, Irish and Rocca. In some nations there is a sense of honor Super.

Goodbye, cruel world
Sam Israel, aged 49, was a successful businessman who won a fortune in a hedge fund, a fund at risk. Convicted in June 2008 to 20 years in prison for defrauding investors in some $ 450 million, Israel was invited to go to jail. (Yes, the rich are different). Therefore, the businessman got in his car, and rowed towards the prison, located in the suburbs of New York. But Israel never came to the gates of the prison. His truck was found parked on a bridge across the Hudson River. In the dusty hood of the van Israel wrote with their fingers "suicide is painless."

Initially it was thought that investors had been thrown into the River.

But the search for his body did not work. Then it was discovered that Israel was gathered on the bridge by his girlfriend, and secretly returned to his home in Armonk, New York. Finally, on July 2, Israel handed to the police, and a furious judge ordered him to join his 10 years prison sentence for his escape attempt. Israel's mother was about to suffer a heart attack after learning of the feigned suicide of her son and his girlfriend had been prosecuted as an accomplice in the failed escape.

Drills
But perhaps the financier takes Palmas is Marcus Schrenk, a businessman from Indiana, aged 38, owner of the firm Heritage Wealth Management Incorporated. In January 2008, the Indiana Department of Insurance filed a complaint against him on behalf of seven investors who accused him of losing them altogether $ 250,000 because the employer never informed that they should pay higher fares if it wanted to change their annuities.

A year later, on January 9, 2009, a federal judge in Maryland drew Schrenk that the company would pay $ 533,500 in costs due to problems with insurance or annuity that the employer had sold for the insurer OM Financial Life Insurance Company.

Overwhelmed by debt which of course, did not seem to pay Schrenk thought of a stratagem light. On January 11, 2009, the financier from the departed runway of Anderson, Indiana, aboard his single engine Piper Malibu, headed to Destin, Florida. When over Huntsville, Alabama, Schrenk started to send distress messages to the nearest control tower, reporting severe turbulence.

Soon after, the calls became more urgent. Schrenk said one of the windscreen of the plane had exploded, which was bleeding profusely and that at any moment, could crash. Then he left the plane on autopilot, a parachute was hooked and took off under vacuum.

But the plane showed an incredible resilience. Continued to fly for nearly an hour, and finally crashed over 300 miles away, in a swamp near a residential area in the Panhandle (outgoing) of Florida.

However, after September 11, 2001, the U.S. authorities get very nervous when the aircraft lost the course and can be used as projectiles of large size. Schrenk was just his "distress call" (distress call) several air force jets to intercept swift out or destroy the plane, because their pilots were afraid that some disciple of Osama bin Laden was trying to make theirs.

During the minutes that the plane remained in the air, the pilots of the jets were able to observe and photograph from all angles. We also checked that the door was setting, and the cockpit to dark, demonstrating that the pilot had left.

The plane was later discovered in a swamp in Florida and federal marshals found the investor at a campsite hidden in the same state the following night. But on this occasion, it was bleeding profusely Schrenk. He had cut his wrists and was delirious, and grumbled "dies." However, his ploy failed. Now, besides being obliged to pay the $ 533,000 claimed by their debtors, will be held accountable to justice by an aircraft crash and deliberately make a false cry for help. By a miracle the plane did not fall into the residential area, in which case it would have caused a tragedy.

What goes past and present
In the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties, yet there was a sense of honor among American millionaires, and there was an epidemic of suicides among investors after the stock market collapse in New York. Already for 1933, the peak of the Great Depression, when 25% of Americans were unemployed, the suicide rate among Americans fell from 14 to 17 per 100,000, the highest in the history of this country.

But as the Americans say the shrinking shoulders, "That was then, and this is now." That was then and this is now. And now, wealthy entrepreneurs use other methods to address the crisis just the idea of economic ruin begins rounds pockets.