Emily Chan
In 2014, a man named Aubrey Lee Price was sentenced to 30 years in prison for fraud, embezzlement, and other crimes that led to the loss of millions of dollars for dozens of his investors.
He also caused the collapse of a federally insured bank. He went to great lengths to avoid taking responsibility for his actions, even attempting to fake his own death.
Price was a devout Christian minister and a financial advisor who turned to a life of crime, taking advantage of his clients’ trust in him.
He got his start in the investment business to help earn money for mission trips overseas. Eventually, he started his own company, PFG.
Many of his clients were personal friends of his from Georgia, where he lived. Most of them were elderly and had entrusted him with their life savings, only to lose every cent they worked so hard for. He had about 100 significant investors.
In 2009, Price began making risky investment decisions with his clients’ money behind their backs. He hid those transactions from them by forging documents.
In 2010, he talked his clients into investing in a Georgia bank that was struggling to stay afloat. The following year, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to help the bank improve their situation and that his clients would lose a substantial amount of money.
So, he persuaded bank officials to invest some of the institutions in U.S. securities. He was then able to wire out $5 million to an account he claimed to have created with an investment firm in order to pay them back.
However, no such account with an investment firm existed. That $5 million was just the beginning of a scheme that would send chaos into the lives of many people.
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