KEY DATES IN THE SAGA
December, 2010 – An investment group affiliated with Aubrey Lee Price takes a majority stake in troubled Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey.
June, 2012—- Price disappears. His family and some business associates receive letters saying he was responsible for defrauding clients and authorities say Price informed relatives he planned to jump off a Florida ferry to end his life. A note is found, bearing Price’s name but not his signature, confessing to concealing losses.
July, 2012 – Regulators shut down MB&T, and Price is indicted in Savannah on a federal bank fraud charge. Regulators freeze his assets. Former clients file complaint for damages from an Atlanta firm where Price once worked. The FBI says it is enlisting the help of counterparts in South America and with Interpol to find Price.
January, 2013 – Justice officials announce a separate indictment in New York charging Price with securities and wire fraud. It alleges Price unsuccessfully invested about $40 million from 115 investors, losing the money and trying to cover up the losses with fake account statements.
February, 2013 – The FBI said all vehicles and watercraft believed to belong to Price had been accounted for, except a 17-foot Sea Ray fiberglass boat.
Tuesday – Glynn County sheriff’s deputies pulled over a pickup Price was driving near Brunswick. Authorities said they found multiple IDs and later determined Price’s real identity.
Thursday – Price appears before a federal magistrate judge, with another hearing scheduled for Monday.
HOW THE STORY BEGAN
In December 2010, Price led an investor group to save Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey, about 170 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta. The bank was on the brink of failure, and the cash convinced Ailey locals to invest their own money to help save the bank.
Federal prosecutors say Price gained control of the bank’s accounts and sustained heavy losses on investments while providing doctored financial statements to clients and the bank. MB&T failed in July 2012, not long after Price went missing.
He was indicted that month for embezzling more than $21 million from the bank and millions more from investors. He also faces federal wire fraud charges in New York, as well as civil suits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and jilted clients.
HOW THE STORY BEGAN
In December 2010, Price led an investor group to save Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey, about 170 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta. The bank was on the brink of failure, and the cash convinced Ailey locals to invest their own money to help save the bank.
Federal prosecutors say Price gained control of the bank’s accounts and sustained heavy losses on investments while providing doctored financial statements to clients and the bank. MB&T failed in July 2012, not long after Price went missing.
He was indicted that month for embezzling more than $21 million from the bank and millions more from investors. He also faces federal wire fraud charges in New York, as well as civil suits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and jilted clients.
HOW THE STORY BEGAN
In December 2010, Price led an investor group to save Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey, about 170 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta. The bank was on the brink of failure, and the cash convinced Ailey locals to invest their own money to help save the bank.
Federal prosecutors say Price gained control of the bank’s accounts and sustained heavy losses on investments while providing doctored financial statements to clients and the bank. MB&T failed in July 2012, not long after Price went missing.
He was indicted that month for embezzling more than $21 million from the bank and millions more from investors. He also faces federal wire fraud charges in New York, as well as civil suits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and jilted clients.
Aubrey Lee Price told a federal probation officer he had been homeless and wandering about the country doing odd jobs. His dented Dodge pickup held a smattering of junk, a propane tank, a pair of blue jeans and a sleeping bag.
Not much is yet known about Price’s 18 months on the lam, though a few details about that and his arrest emerged on Thursday during an initial court appearance, from interviews with law enforcement officials and from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter’s observation of Price’s vehicle.
Price, a former bank director and investment adviser who allegedly faked his own death, was indicted in July 2012 for allegedly embezzling more than $21 million from a small South Georgia bank. He is accused separately of defrauding more than 100 clients of his investment advisory business of many millions of dollars more.
Glynn County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Price Tuesday following a traffic stop in the coastal Georgia county. Authorities said the 47-year-old had fake IDs and told deputies, who at the time did not know who he was, conflicting stories about where he had been.
Price — who became the subject of national coverage over the New Year’s holiday — on Thursday shuffled into a small courtroom on the third floor of the federal courthouse in Brunswick to hear the charges against him. His legs were shackled, the lank, dark hair he had grown long since disappearing draped over the shoulders of his blue jail jumpsuit.
It was a jarring departure from the clean-cut, light-haired man with a friendly smile and suit in the photo distributed by authorities when Price disappeared in June 2012, leaving a “confession” note and hinting that he planned to leap to his death from a South Florida ferry boat.
Price quietly said “yes, sir” to the judge a few times when asked questions about his understanding of court procedure. Price didn’t look at the half-dozen or so of his family members in the gallery, and they declined to comment or identify themselves, with one woman saying only that the truth about him will come out.
Price also did not look in the direction of Mary Jo Peters, a former client, who attended Thursday’s hearing.
“He just looked at his feet. He didn’t even look at his family,” said Peters. “I needed that (eye contact) for closure.”
A federal probation officer told U.S. Magistrate Court Judge James Graham that Price had said he was homeless, moving around the nation as a migrant worker.
Where Price stayed, who he worked for and whether he had any help in hiding were among many unanswered questions. Also left unanswered was how much money, if any, he had with him when he boarded that ferry boat in Key West, Fla., where he was last seen. Local and federal authorities also declined to say if he had any money when captured.
Glynn authorities did reveal a little more about his apprehension.
Deputies were first alerted to a 2001 Ram pickup because of its deep window tint — a gold shade in the front windows, a darker glaze in the back. When deputies Brian Faulk and Justin Juliano pulled behind the pickup on I-95 North, the vehicle immediately slowed to 50 mph, 15 mph below the posted limit.
“That’s what drew our attention to him was him slowing down so much when we came up behind him,” Juliano told reporters Thursday.
Juliano said Price was nervous and shaking during the traffic stop. Authorities said Price told them he had been traveling in Florida, but didn’t say where, and he didn’t have any luggage. His story also kept changing, and he also initially handed deputies a driver’s licenses that clearly wasn’t his. Police later found a separate fake ID with Price’s photo.
“The one that was fake he said he got at a flea market,” Juliano said. “He didn’t say why he had one. It didn’t make a lot of sense why a 47-year-old man would have a fake ID.”
At the county lockup, when the deputies asked the man again for his name, Juliano said, Price told him: “’I’m going to make you famous. And if you can accept the reward money, I’m going to make you rich.’”
Price then revealed his name and said he was wanted by the FBI. Despite being declared dead in a Florida court, Price remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted web page for white collar crime. The reward: $20,000.
Glynn County Sheriff E. Neal Jump told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that the FBI got search warrants for the pickup and computer inside the vehicle. Asked if Price had items on his person or in the truck that might indicate where he’d been, Jump said, no, “it wasn’t that easy.”
Jump said Price said little else, and has been a quiet inmate.
Price’s pickup was parked on Thursday at a local towing company. An AJC reporter observed blue jeans, a propane tank, a notebook and pair of pliers inside the cab. A silver sleeping bag and what appeared to be a camouflage jacket or tarp were balled in the corner of the bed, along with a cinder block, gas can and axe handle. The truck had a Georgia plate with a tag from Liberty County, just north of Glynn. It expired in December.
In court, federal prosecutors said the former fugitive Price was “a significant flight risk.” During his 18 months in hiding, some former clients speculated he could be in South America, where he did business.
Graham, the federal magistrate, granted the prosecutor’s request to delay a bond hearing until Monday in Savannah.
Peters, one of Price’s former clients, doubts Price’s purported claims of being a migrant worker.
“He made all these plans to go away, several forms of ID, and he just decided to stay in the United States as a migrant worker?” Peters said. “I don’t think so.”
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