Day of reckoning comes for financier who fleeced the flock
The sad-faced fellow down the aisle from me in federal court had a sudden change of mind Monday afternoon. He now wanted to tell his story.
Donald Joe Hubbard, who had worked in the finance industry, wanted to tell the judge how he had been wronged by Brant Frost IV, a Christian conservative activist and admitted Ponzi schemer.
Hubbard was angered that half of the courtroom in Newnan was filled by dozens of Frost’s supporters.
“Look at all those people over there,” he said pointing across the aisle. “They ought to be over here (on the unofficial victims’ side of the paneled room). This is appalling.”
Addressing the defendant, Chief U.S District Judge Leigh Martin May acknowledged the competing themes in the courtroom when noting “the two-sided nature of your personality.”
There was much to untangle in the web of Frost’s deceit, she said. Yes, he was a religious man who performed many godly acts, as noted in more than 80 letters beseeching the judge for lenience.
But he employed a “conjunction of faith and politics” through his company, First Liberty Building and Loan, to fleece more than 300 victims of at least $76 million, May said. Many were elderly and hard-working folks who saved and sacrificed for decades only to be utterly betrayed by a respected man they trusted.
“Unfortunately, the charismatic nature of your personality allowed you to get away with this,” the judge noted.
So, she threw the book at Frost, sentencing him to 15 years in prison — a year more than prosecutors asked for, and a decade more than what defense attorneys sought.
The federal courtroom in downtown Newnan represented a split community and a passion play of the depths and heights of humanity: There was pride, avarice, courage, shame, regret, trust, betrayal, resilience and, for some, forgiveness.
It was a day of competing narratives.
“This was active deception committed hundreds of times over several years,” federal prosecutor Angela Adams told the judge. “He exploited people’s religious and political beliefs. He used those personal convictions to get into the hearts and pocketbooks of these victims.”
Frost’s defense attorneys spelled out an alternate version in a pleading filed with the court: “He asks little of the world and he covets only family, faith and service. Brant has never been fueled by self-interest, arrogance or ego, and he is not a person who looks down on anybody.”
Frost’s legal team said he was desperately trying to turn around his flagging financial empire for his clients. They argued a lengthy prison term for the 69-year-old would be a “death sentence.”
Judge May later reasoned that Frost’s crimes were committed while he was in his 60s, so the punishment is fitting.
Frost’s decline was a classic in a realm of serial fraudsters. He successfully managed a business investing people’s money for decades but ran into trouble in 2021 with some bad loans. He then solicited money from new investors to make interest payments to previous clients, and hide the scale of this mounting disaster.
In 2025, his operation collapsed under his mountain of lies and hubris. Worse, prosecutors say, he diverted more than $5 million on pricey vacations, jewelry, rare coins and more than $570,000 in ego- and clout-boosting political contributions to GOP candidates.
First Liberty’s model was to take investors’ money for use in high-interest bridge loans to businesses, earning investors hefty returns, usually 8% to 18%. However, these were not covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., so investors will now see pennies on the dollar, if anything.
Gary Brodie, 74, may have been one of the last investors. He said he gave Frost’s company $316,000 in February 2025, got a few monthly interest payments and then went in with another $700,000 on May 30, 2025. It was a month before the collapse.
His retirement is now delayed and he lives with a sense of shame for getting taken.
“As a Christian conservative, I taught my children that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid,” he said. But now he worries his adult children “think I’m crazy. Why did you do this?”
Allen Baldwin and sons Jordan and Ryan sat in the front row behind the prosecutor.
Jordan told the judge that Frost is “dead inside” and drove him into “ruinous debt.”
“Brant appeared to be a Godsend; he used skill, kindness and charisma” to attract investors, Jordan said. He added, “Brant is an abuser of widows, a cheat, a liar and an unrepentant sinner.”
Ryan Baldwin told a story familiar to many of those fleeced, one of living a steady life of frugality and sacrifice. He drove a 15-year-old Honda, made late-night calls to fix rental properties and deferred family vacations.
Meanwhile, he noted that Frost lived luxuriously off their hard-earned savings.
He said he shifted his “entire seven-figure nest egg” to Frost.
Later, toward the end of his testimony, Ryan Baldwin turned to the defense table and said, “Brant, I forgive you.”
His father, who has known Frost for decades, said he was devastated by Frost’s “manipulative friendship.”
He asked the judge to hit Frost with the max sentence: 20 years. Then he said, “I forgive him as a brother in Christ. I believe his faith was real, but he made a decision to set aside his dignity.”
James McMaster, 94, ambled to the podium and said the 12% interest on his investment was to help his sister with in-home care — care he can no longer afford.
I spoke with McMaster outside the courthouse. He said he vetted Frost as well as he could before sinking $1.3 million in First Liberty. That was in 2024. “He knew he was upside down,” said McMaster.
As we spoke, Frost and a group of his supporters left the courthouse, hurriedly walking away.
A driver stopped at the intersection leaned out his window and shouted, “Crook!”
For Frost’s lifetime of good works, that will be his legacy.