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It was a getaway attempt worthy of Ian Fleming, but in the end, a suspected US fraudster proved he was no James Bond, in the most embarrassing way.

Matthew Piercey (below), a California man accused of financial crimes, was briefly on the lam after the FBI attempted to arrest him on Monday morning.

He tried to do this first by car, and then using an underwater sea scooter to hide from agents in Lake Shasta, a reservoir in Shasta County, California.

Sea scooters, also known as diver propulsion vehicles, are underwater devices that can pull a person through the water.

Image: CBS Sacramento

What Piercey didn’t take into account is that the lake is notoriously freezing. Furthermore, the FBI probably wasn’t going to wander off as soon as he disappeared from view.

Setting aside bewilderment as to why he would attempt to evade the Feds using the same method that you’d employ to escape a swarm of bees, here’s CBS News with why he was on the run in the first place, and more about his botched plan and subsequent capture.

Image: CBS Sacramento

Piercey was wanted for running an alleged $35 million Ponzi scheme.

Last week, he and his business partner were indicted by a grand jury. He is accused of scamming investors into handing over $35 million to his companies, Family Wealth Legacy and Zolla, promising guaranteed returns using an “Upvesting Fund” – an alleged “algorithmic trading fund with a history of success”, said prosecutors.

Some of those funds were reportedly set aside for personal use, including the purchase of two properties and a houseboat.

Piercey faces charges including wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and witness tampering, for which he could be looking at 20 years in prison, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

On to the federal prosecutors who described his escape attempt, beginning with him hopping into a pickup truck and speeding off.

“Then, Piercey abandoned his truck near the edge of Lake Shasta, pulled something out of it, and swam into Lake Shasta,” federal prosecutors wrote in court documents calling Piercey a flight risk.

“Piercey spent some time out of sight underwater where law enforcement could only see bubbles.”

Attorney Josh Kons who is representing some of his alleged victims is just as confused as everyone else:

“You know, you never know what is going through someone’s mind when they’re being pursued by the FBI,” Kons told CBS Sacramento. “And we kept investigating, and all of a sudden today, here he is trying to escape into a lake, using a submersible device.”

He managed to spend around 25 minutes in the lake, propelled by his sea scooter (it was a Yamaha 350Li submersible for all you sea scooter enthusiasts out there) before he resurfaced and was handcuffed.

Per the BBC, when he was pulled from the lake he was examined for hypothermia and given dry clothes that the FBI had collected from his wife

I’m unconvinced that the attempt to escape was worth sacrificing whatever dignity he had left.

[source:cbs]