Aubrey Lee Price went to great lengths to convince the law and the clients he’s accused of defrauding of millions of dollars that he’d jumped to his death from a Florida ferry boat.
But on Tuesday morning, the South Georgia bank director and money manager’s 18 months on the lam came to an end, undone by one apparent concealment too many — windows that were too darkly tinted.
Two Glynn County Sheriff’s deputies pulled over a 2001 Dodge pickup along I-95 near Brunswick and found a man they later learned was Price with multiple fake IDs, authorities said.
Price, 47, was indicted in July 2012 of embezzling $21 million from Montgomery Bank & Trust, a small bank in tiny Ailey, Ga. MB&T was a bank Price and his investor clients came to save, but which later failed after his alleged fraud was uncovered. He was also accused of bilking investors in his money management business of many millions more.
He also faces federal wire fraud charges in New York, as well as civil suits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and jilted clients.
Price went missing in June 2012, grabbing national headlines. He is believed to have drafted a rambling suicide note in which he admitted to defrauding investor clients and his bank. He was last seen boarding a ferry in Key West, where Price hinted he planned to meet his doom.
“My time has just run out. I die and will be buried in shame and regret as I should,” the apologia read.
One court later declared him dead so that investors could attempt to claim proceeds of a life insurance policy.
But local and federal authorities long believed Price had hidden away. Clients feared he was living the high life under an assumed name — possibly somewhere in South America — where he purportedly traveled and did business.
It was unclear late Tuesday where Price had been hiding, authorities said.
Price remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted white collar criminals list, and the Web page listed him Tuesday as “Captured.”
In his Glynn County mug shot, Price had a goatee and shoulder-length hair, starkly different from the photos of the clean-shaven, light-haired money manager that authorities distributed when he disappeared.
“I’d love to know how he’s been living, what money he’s been living on and what money he has left,” said Wendy Cross, an Atlanta resident and operator of the W.O.W! food truck business, who nearly lost her company after being defrauded by Price of more than $360,000.
Cross said she long ago gave up hope that she’d recover much money.
“I can’t wait to look this guy in the eye and hear what he has to say, even if it isn’t something I want to hear,” she said.
Glynn County Sheriff E. Neal Jump said Price’s vehicle was stopped after deputies Justin Juliano and Brian Faulk grew suspicious of the dark windows. Also, the driver’s stories just didn’t add up.
After searching his vehicle at the 10:45 a.m. traffic stop, said Jump, the deputies found multiple IDs with differing names in the pickup, including one with a picture that didn’t match.
They arrested him as a John Doe. After a little more than an hour of questioning, Jump said, “he fessed up to who he was.”
“By noon or 12:30 the FBI was on its way, because they were very interested in this guy,” the sheriff said. But Price didn’t say where he had been while he was on the run.
Initially, Price was in the news for helping rescue tiny MB&T, based in his hometown of Ailey, about 170 miles southeast of Atlanta. The bank was on the brink of becoming another fatality in the string of failures that followed the housing bust. In December 2010 a firm controlled by Price, who most recently lived in Valdosta, poured in $10 million of investment money.
That convinced employees, longtime shareholders and customers of the little bank to pump an additional $4 million into the struggling institution. Price became a director and investment chief.
The federal authorities accuse Price of funneling the bank’s investor capital into accounts he controlled at other banks and providing false bank statements to Montgomery Bank management. The alleged scheme precipitated its final downfall, they said.
An apparent suicide note he is believed by authorities to have sent to relatives and business associates said he was “100 percent responsible” for client losses he purposely obscured.
The letter asserted that investors and employees knew nothing of the fraud, which it said was aimed at recouping investor money.
Price grew up in South Georgia and attended Brewton Parker College, a Baptist institution straddling the Ailey-Mount Vernon town lines, according to associates who spoke to the AJC and a bio listed in securities filings.
Several years ago he helped start a north Fulton church, according to property records and state business registration forms.
He worked for the former Banc of America Investments before founding his own firm. From 2009 to June, Price and his investment vehicles raised about $40 million.
The SEC said Price promised his clients “low volatility.” But instead of investments in traditional stocks, Price also put money into much riskier bets such as South American real estate.
The SEC in its civil complaint alleges Price falsified clients’ account information to conceal “massive trading losses” and transferred funds to an operating account of one of Price’s companies.
Price turned to his South Georgia roots, setting up an investment group to pump money into MB&T in Ailey, a town of 450 people on U.S. 280 near Vidalia.
State banking experts hailed the investment as a “success story” to save a more than 85-year-old institution vital to its rural community.
Frank Brantley, a retiree who serves on the Montgomery County Commission, said he never met Price but he bought stock in the bank to support an important part of the community.
“It was a bad deal. A lot of us got hurt financially,” the 73-year-old Brantley said. He declined to say how much he had invested.
“There’s a bunch of folks who will be glad he got arrested. Might not amount to much: the man left with a lot of money. We probably won’t see that again.”
Mary Jo Peters, an investor from Atlanta who moved not long ago to St. Simons, not far from where Price was captured, was one of his longest-tenured investors, joining him in 2004.
It “will be cathartic to look him in the eye,” she said. “We knew he was alive.”
Price is scheduled to make an initial federal court appearance Thursday in Brunswick.
Jump, the Glynn County sheriff, said he also felt for Price’s wife and other relatives.
“I can just imagine what (Price’s) family’s going through now. … I just pray for them,” he said. “I would hate to be in his shoes, having to face his wife saying, ‘I’m not dead.’”
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