The SEC has barred from the securities industry Aubrey Lee Price, an imprisoned former Georgia investment adviser who pleaded guilty in 2014 to a massive fraud that helped bring down his troubled bank and cheated his clients out of millions of dollars.
The penalty is inconsequential as Price is expected to spend three decades in federal prison. He submitted his offer to be banned from the industry in August, and the SEC accepted it this week, thus resolving the SEC’s civil action against him.
Price had disappeared in 2012, having written suicide notes confessing to defrauding his clients and Montgomery Bank & Trust. In some of the notes, he detailed his intent to jump from a ferry in Florida.
A Florida judge declared Price legally dead roughly six months after he disappeared, but federal authorities never believed that he was actually dead. On New Year’s Eve 2013, Price was captured in a routine traffic stop on I-95 near Brunswick, Georgia.
In October 2014, Price was sentenced to a combined 70 years in prison on counts of bank, securities, and wire fraud. He was ordered to serve 30 years.
In this week’s order, the SEC barred Price “from association with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, municipal securities dealer, municipal advisor, transfer agent, or nationally recognized statistical rating organization.”
Price has pledged to help his clients recoup their losses and has aided a court-appointed receiver’s attempt to find and liquidate remaining assets from his company. Price has said since his capture that financial firms expressed willingness to consult with him and that he also has been approached by Hollywood while working on a memoir.
If you or someone you know has lost money as a result of an investment or Ponzi scheme, please contact Richard Frankowski at 888-741-7503 to discuss your potential legal remedies or complete the contact form.