An associate of missing bank director and alleged fraudster Aubrey Lee Price says he was in the dark about the scheme, just like the clients he steered to the man now wanted by federal authorities.
Justin Zegalia, an investment adviser and senior vice president with the Price-controlled Montgomery Asset Management, said he thought Price's money management activities were legitimate until he learned on June 20 from a client that 46-year-old had disappeared days earlier.
Zegalia told Channel 2 Action News he now believes the 46-year-old father and purported Baptist minister is alive and on the lam.
"I think everybody who was in this feels betrayed on many levels," said Zegalia, who described himself as "devastated and heartbroken."
Price, who goes by his middle name, is being sought by federal authorities for allegedly embezzling at least $17 million, and possibly more than $21 million, from Montgomery Bank & Trust. The tiny south Georgia bank failed last week.
Price was charged last week by federal authorities in New York with wire fraud. On Wednesday, a federal grand jury in Savannah indicted him on a count of bank fraud. The FBI is offering up $20,000 for information leading to his arrest.
Price also is accused in a separate Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint of defrauding more than 100 clients in various investment vehicles he controlled. In a purported confession letter to regulators cited in the securities complaint, Price said his actions cost clients as much as $23 million.
That letter, sent to friends and colleagues around the time of his disappearance, also said he provided clients with false financial statements as he scrambled to make back clients' money from heavy losses. The letter also suggested he intended to commit suicide.
Authorities say he was last seen on a ferry leaving Key West, Fla. Price is believed to travel regularly to Venezuela and Guatemala.
Meanwhile, some of Price's clients are beginning to seek legal counsel and exploring their own investigations, said Robert Port, an attorney who has been contacted along with an allied firm in Ohio by about a dozen jilted investors.
Port, with Cohen Goldstein Port & Gottlieb in Atlanta, declined further comment. He also declined to make clients available for interviews with the AJC.
Zegalia said his mother also was an investor, entrusting her life savings with Price. Zegalia said he has had to sell a truck and other personal assets to keep his finances afloat.
Since Price's disappearance, Zegalia said he has tried to piece together what happened and console clients.
He is not sure if the funds in Price's investment vehicles are covered by any liability insurance, but he said that clients signed forms indicating Price had some form of coverage.
Zegalia said he referred clients to Price over the years, but Price controlled the investment decisions and kept client information at his office in Florida.
Price, who Zegalia said he has known for more than a decade, worked with the missing man at stops including Banc of America Investment Services.
Investors have told the AJC that Price helped start a church in North Fulton and he also had clients join him on mission trips to Venezuela, where his various funds also had investments.
Zegalia said one of his clients said Price, purportedly a Baptist minister, even preached at her son's funeral.
"He used his Christian faith and his relationship with God as a front to all of this," Zegalia said.
At first, Zegalia said he believed Price might have killed himself. He doesn't believe that anymore.
Asked if Price could have faked his own death, Zegalia said: "Shoot yeah. Yeah."
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