He’s been missing and feared dead since last summer, but that has not stopped a federal grand jury in New York from charging former Georgia bank official Aubrey Lee Price with securities and wire fraud.
The indictment was announced Friday by U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, and it accuses Price of unsuccessfully investing about $40 million from 115 investors, losing the money and trying to cover up the losses by posting fake account statements that had “fictitious assets and fabricated investment returns,” the prosecutor said in a statement Friday.
George Venizelos of the FBI’s office in New York said the agency continues to search for Price, who authorities said admitted to an acquaintance in mid-June 2012 that he had lost a large amount of investor money and allegedly planned to kill himself by jumping from a ferry boat in Florida. The FBI hasn’t bought the suicide threat.
“As alleged, Price lied to investors about where their money would be invested, and lied to them about the solvency of his company,” Venizelos said in a statement. “He lied to the bank on whose board he served about investment of bank capital, and lied again to cover up that lie. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Price’s talk of suicide was also a lie. The FBI is actively looking for Aubrey Lee Price.”
Mysterious disappearance
Price, 46 years old at the time, disappeared June 16, 2012 and was last seen at a ferry terminal where it is believed he boarded a vessel bound for Fort Myers. It was there that Price told some people he planned to jump to his death from a ferry, according to the federal complaint.
He left a purported signed confession that said he tried in vain to recoup his investors’ losses.
“I realize that time is up and that there is no way I can work my way out of the mess that I have created,” the letter said.
Federal authorities later released surveillance photos from a Key West airport and ferry terminal showing Price on the day of his disappearance.
According to the federal indictment announced Friday in New York, Price managed two investment funds: the Montgomery Growth Fund and PFG LLC. The charges say he raised about $40 million from about 115 investors across the nation in June 2009 and invested the money in various equity securities, options, and real estate, including farms in South America.
In January 2011, the indictment says, Price joined the board of Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey, Ga., and also invested much of the bank’s capital in risky investments in securities and options — instead of safer U.S. Treasury securities, which he had promised bank officials. Prosecutors said he also used MB&T’s money to pay off PFG investors. Price allegedly presented MB&T bank officials with falsified documents showing the bank had $17 million on deposit at a large financial services firm in New York.
Before Friday’s announcement, Price already had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Savannah on charges of bank fraud. In that complaint, he is accused of embezzling up to $21 million from MB&T, where he became a board member after leading a group that invested millions of dollars in an effort to save the bank.
Price is known to travel frequently to Guatemala and Venezuela, where he is said to own property. He is believed to have owned as many as five boats, several of them capable of a voyage to another country.
If convicted of the charges announced in New York, Price could face a maximum of 30 years in prison for wire fraud and 25 years for securities fraud.
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