Isaac Culver, former Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce chair and defendant, testified in his own federal fraud trial Friday.
The defense attorneys of Culver started presenting their case Friday morning.
Culver is accused of defrauding the Bibb County School District out of $3.7 million while giving them unusable computer technology in return.
Culver's family and friends were present in the courtroom.
FORMER PCTI EMPLOYEE SAYS PROJECT KEPT GROWING
The defense brought forth two former employees of Culver's company, Progressive Consulting Technologies, Inc.
Henry Scott was a program manager at PCTI and worked on the Bibb County School District project.
He said it was impossible to rollout the NComputing L300 devices without upgrading the entire network infrastructure of the school district first.
Scott said they had plans to install a new Network Operating Center to serve as a centralized hub where all servers could be managed.
FAST FACTS: A breakdown of Isaac Culver's federal fraud trial
Because of this, Scott said the original scope of the project expanded to include all the new upgrades.
The entire cost for the upgrades and installation--projected by Scott--was around $30.9 million.
Scott said Bibb County was aware of the cost and that they would have to provide hardware such as monitors, keyboards and mice for the L300s.
Scott would give updates on the project's progress to former Superintendent Romain Dallemand and Director of Technology Tom Tourand when needed (Tourand died in 2017).
PCTI was doing work in Bibb County schools well into 2013.
STATE OF THE DISTRICT'S TECHNOLOGY IN 2012
James Banks, a former consultant of PCTI at the time of the Bibb County project assessed the school's technology before the upgrades began.
In his testimony, Banks said everything was a mess. Pictures presented in evidence showed cables hanging in tangled webs, equipment not properly mounted to walls and servers sitting on plastic chairs.
Defense also presented pictures of the cabling work PCTI oversaw. They showed new cables organized and neatly installed.
TEACHERS IMPRESSED BY NCOMPUTING DEVICES
The defense called two former principals in the Bibb County School District as witnesses as well.
They both recalled seeing a demonstration of the NComputing L300 devices and were impressed with them.
Both schools received a pilot rollout of the devices, and one even asked how she could get more for her school at the time.
CULVER'S FRIENDS TAKE THE STAND
The last four witnesses, who were also Culver's friends, were brought in to testify about who Culver was as a person.
Among them was former Macon mayor and Congressman Jim Marshall.
Marshall said he met Culver back in the late '90s when he was running for Congress and needed help with the computers in his office.
From there, they developed a friendship that lasted through the years.
Marshall said Culver's character is very good and that others in the community agree.
The defense asked Marshall if Culver was law-abiding. Marshall said yes, he was.
The other three witnesses agreed Culver's character was good and he was law abiding.
"I THOUGHT I COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE"
Culver, 48, took to the witness stand near the end of the day.
Culver explained how PCTI became technical project manager for the Bibb County schools project.
While PCTI had extensive experience working on government contracts, particularly with Warner Robins Air Logistics, he chose to write a fake reference letter in order to get the job.
Culver said they were on a time crunch. He regrets the decision now and said, "it was a very bad way of doing things."
Culver said working for Dallemand and the school district was difficult.
While PCTI proposed several solutions to the school district's failing technology system, Dallemand made up his mind about the L300s.
And once Dallemand made up his mind, Culver said there was no changing it.
Culver went on to say PCTI was given too short of a time frame for such a massive installation project.
He also explained while the cost of the NComputing L300s was $1.7 million, they billed the school district $3.7 million because $2 million was a reasonable price for the amount of physical labor the installation required.
Culver explained it was not their original plan to use the General Services Administration for the NComputing purchase, but it was asked of them by Tourand after they received quotes for the devices.
Culver thought the best course of action was to use a third party company who had a GSA affiliation as a pass through for the purchase.
That company was CompTech.
Culver said he had little knowledge of how GSA sales worked and there was no attempt to deceive CompTech's CEO, Allen Stephen.
Culver explained to Dallemand that they were using CompTech as a pass through, and thought Dallemand understood what he meant.
The defense attorney asked Culver why he even took the job in the first place.
Culver said that Bibb County was "his school district" and he wanted "to make a change."
The trial will resume Monday at 8 a.m. with Culver continuing his testimony.