A federal regulator has barred from the securities industry an imprisoned former Georgia investment adviser who pleaded guilty in 2014 to a massive fraud that helped bring down his troubled bank and cheated his clients out of millions of dollars.
The punishment is a moot point for Aubrey Lee Price, who is expected to spend three decades in federal prison. Price submitted the offer to be banned from the industry in August, and the Securities and Exchange Commission accepted it this week, according to an SEC filing. The settlement resolves the SEC's civil action against Price.
Price made international headlines when he disappeared in June 2012, having written suicide notes confessing to bilking his clients and Montgomery Bank & Trust, which later failed. In some versions of the notes he described his intent to jump from a ferry in Florida.
A judge in Florida declared Price legally dead about six months after he disappeared, but federal authorities never believed Price killed himself. On New Year's Eve 2013, after 18 months on the lam, the former preacher was captured in a routine traffic stop on I-95 near Brunswick.
In October 2014, Price was sentenced to a combined 70 years in prison on counts of bank, securities and wire fraud, and ordered to serve 30 years.
In the order announced this week, the SEC barred Price "from association with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, municipal securities dealer, municipal advisor, transfer agent, or nationally recognized statistical rating organization."
Price has pledged to help his clients recoup their losses and has aided a court-appointed receiver’s attempt to find and liquidate remaining assets from his company. Price has said since his capture that financial firms expressed willingness to consult with him and that he also has been approached by Hollywood while working on a memoir.
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