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 The Marion County Sheriff's Department discovered the plants on
Wednesday at a mobile home rented by Aubrey Lee Price, 47, in Ocala,
Florida, less than 80 miles northwest of Orlando, department
spokesman James Pogue told Reuters.
A day earlier, Price, a former director of Montgomery Bank & Trust,
a small bank in Ailey, Georgia, was arrested near Brunswick,
Georgia, when authorities noticed his pickup truck windows appeared
to be tinted too darkly to comply with state law.
Price had disappeared more than a year earlier, just before he was
indicted in Georgia in July 2012 on one count of bank fraud, which
carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million
fine. He left behind a written confession and a note for family and
friends saying he planned to kill himself, authorities said.
His wife believed he was dead, her attorney John Holt said on
Thursday.
Price had recently been living at the Florida property and the
landlord called police after spotting several marijuana plants
growing in the garage, according to a police report. A deputy saw
several bright lights and "tall green plants" believed to be
marijuana in the garage, the report said.
After obtaining a search warrant, investigators discovered a total
of 225 marijuana plants in the garage and mobile home, the police
report said. No charges have yet been filed against Price in
connection with the marijuana, Pogue said.
Price, who was charged with giving false identification at the time
of his arrest this week, was ordered held in police custody until a
detention hearing set for Monday in Savannah, court records showed.
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Price previously controlled an investment group that put $10 million
into Montgomery Bank & Trust, according to the federal indictment.
After being named a bank director, he "fraudulently obtained over
$21 million of MB&T funds, which he then misappropriated, embezzled
and lost in speculative trading and other investing," the indictment
said.
In an effort to hide the fraud, Price provided bank officials with
fabricated account statements, the indictment said. Regulators later
shut down the bank's two branches. Price was indicted in New York
last year on securities and wire fraud charges connected to the
scheme.
Before his arrest on Tuesday, Price was last seen boarding a ferry
in Key West, Florida, in June 2012. Investigators at the time
speculated that he either committed suicide or fled to Venezuela.
Last year, his wife asked a Florida judge to declare her husband
deceased for estate planning purposes and will now seek to have the
declaration set aside, Holt said.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Andrew Hay)
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