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Aubrey Lee Price, a former Georgia investor, made headlines overnight as a notorious con artist who embezzled millions from his clients and then faked his own tragic death to forego responsibility.
ABC's The Con, from the critically acclaimed Whoopi Goldberg, which brings viewers stories of fraud and scandals, will feature Price's story next. Through interviews with the victims as well as the main perpetrator of the fraud, the episode titled Faithful Banker will air on ABC soon.
Who is Aubrey Lee Price and how did he fake his own demise?
Aubrey Lee Price was a pastor-turned-banker who conned a federal bank and several elderly private investors and embezzled and lost about $60 million dollars in speculative trading and high-risk investments.
Price got 115 clients to invest in his firm and raised around $40 million, all of which he lost. He also laundered $21 million belonging to Montgomery Bank and Trust in rural southeast Georgia, where he served as director. This led to the collapse of the federally insured bank, which closed down soon after the 48-year-old con artist went missing.
Price then faked his own death to evade any responsibility for the loss and left apparently fake suicide letters where he mentioned that he was going to jump off a ferryboat. An excerpt of his letter from his unpublished memoir read:
"I made my plans to leave this world at one of my favorite places in life. I found a quiet spot on the outside second-floor deck of the ferry that was somewhat out of the wind and rain. I don’t remember anyone being on the deck with me. I just sat quietly, praying what prayers I could put together and wiping tears from my cheeks."
He evidently did not take the leap and instead went on the run. Price was assumed dead by his family, and his wife pressured the Florida judge to declare him dead.
However, in December 2013, a year after Price was announced dead, he was caught. During his time on the run, he traveled to various states like Venezuela as well as Florida but was ultimately captured in a routine traffic check near Brunswick on the Georgia coast where the officer caught him using a fake ID.
Aubrey Lee Price was brought to trial where he grudgingly accepted responsibility and made another false promise to pay back his investors. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the United States District Judge for the Southern District of Georgia.
What is ABC's The Con?
The Con is an ABC docu-series narrated by the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg, which explores stories of fraud and false promises leading to financial and romantic entanglements that have left victims devastated.
From identity fraud to the Fyre Festival, the series shows how, taken in by promises that were too good to be true, victims found themselves at a loss. With interviews from people caught up in these cases, the law enforcement officers who handled the situation, as well as the perpetrators themselves, The Con brings a thrilling insider perspective to fraudulent businesses.
Catch the Aubrey Lee Price story on The Con on July 28, 2022.
