On December 12th, 2013, Aubrey Lee Price — a 48-year-old bank director and licensed financial adviser operating across Georgia and Florida — was arrested and charged with federal fraud after investigators confirmed he had faked his own death by suicide to escape accountability for a scheme that defrauded Montgomery Bank & Trust and dozens of private investors of more than $40 million. Price had fabricated farewell notes suggesting he had jumped from a Key West ferry into the ocean, vanishing before federal investigators could act and leaving behind a collapsed bank and wiped-out retirement accounts. The FBI investigation, which had spanned more than a year, ended not with a dramatic sting but with a routine traffic stop in which a license-plate check revealed Price was alive, living under an assumed identity. He subsequently pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the Southern District of Georgia and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Among his victims were investors who had entrusted Price with savings accumulated over decades — including one retired couple whose entire $280,000 retirement account was liquidated and redirected into the scheme, leaving them with nothing but a death notice for a man who was still breathing.