A finance executive who faked his suicide after embezzling millions from elderly investors and a bank he directed was sentenced to 30 years in prison for bank, wire and securities fraud.
Aubrey Lee Price, 48, claimed in a suicide letter that he planned to jump off a ferry leaving Key West in June 2012 after admitting to years of fraud and deception. In December 2013, police picked up a barely-recognizable Price in Brunswick, Ga., during a routine traffic stop.
Price had funneled more than $21 million from Montgomery Bank & Trust and lost most of it through a series of risky investments between the time he joined the bank in 2010 and the time he vanished in June 2012.
Authorities say Price squandered an additional $51 million of individual investors’ money on speculative trading between June 2009 and June 2012.
Price attempted to cover his tracks at MB&T by providing its executives with fake documents that showed the money he had lost was safely in an account at a financial services firm. He similarly misled his individual investors by posting fabricated account statements displaying fake returns online.
After sending his associates a lengthy “suicide letter” in which he admitted to the Ponzi scheme, Price disappeared just weeks before MB&T closed its doors.
“My worst fear has come upon me. I have not been successful at working my way out my horrendous financial mistakes,” he wrote in the suicide letter. “At this point, it would be better for me to exit this world and not cause the tax payers (sic) of our great country anything extra.”
The U.S. Coast Guard launched a search for his body in the area where Price claimed he had jumped to his death.
The finance executive was finally found on New Year’s Eve in 2013 after police could not ascertain his identity during a routine traffic stop near the Georgia coast.
Price pleaded guilty to the fraud charges in June. He now faces 30 years in prison and five years of supervised release, as well as a forfeiture of $51 million and additional restitutions that will be decided in February 2015.
