A Navy veteran who faked his own death to avoid dealing with allegations he stole from some of his business clients agreed Monday to pay the Coast Guard $1 million, after completely wasting their time with a pointless search.
Richard Winsor Ohrn worked as a bank adviser and abruptly vanished, faking his own death in an apparent fit of mental illness, which came about he after allegedly stole from his elderly clients, the Sun Sentinel reports. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is investigating Ohrn for illicitly withdrawing $15,000 from the accounts of two elderly clients.
Ohrn, 46, rented a SeaRay 185 Sport vessel and subsequently abandoned it on March 31, 2015. Just as he planned, another nearby boat discovered the empty vessel and reported it. Investigators discovered blood on the vessel and a pair of broken glasses, prompting the Coast Guard to launch a full search effort for three days that ended up costing $1 million, only to come up empty-handed on April 2.
But then Ohrn suddenly appeared in Palm Beach County just 10 days later, at which point he confessed to “faking his disappearance.”
During the time where he was missing, he had used his nephew’s name to rent an apartment in Georgia after staging a fake crime scene on the boat and leaving on an inflatable vessel he had brought out to sea along with the boat.
Ohrn now has to sell his home, which has an assessed value of $550,000, to help cover the judgment costs.
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