CompTech CEO, employee and school officials all testify against Culver in day 3 of federal trial

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Bibb County school officials were concerned from the beginning regarding a multi-million dollar purchase of defective computers to the district in 2012.

At least that’s what they said on the stand earlier.

In day three of court proceedings for the federal case against Progressive Consulting CEO Isaac Culver, two school officials and two employees of CompTech, the company the district did business with, took the stand to testify.

What we know now is both groups had radically different views of the company’s role in the purchase of those computers.

CompTech CEO Allen Stephen says he entered business with Isaac Culver and Progressive Consulting under the pretenses of “trust, loyalty and honor.”

During his testimony against Culver on Wednesday, he told federal prosecutors he soon found out that wasn’t the case when invoice figures for the purchase of 15,000 faulty computing devices had several unexplained shifts.

Jurors heard from the prosecution’s two key witnesses–Allen Stephen and an employee of his, Missy Shaw, who prepared invoices for the purchase of those computers.

Both Stephen and Shaw told prosecutors from the very start, they were under the impression CompTech was only facilitating the purchase for the school district because they had a GSA schedule.

But school district employee Cheryl Canty-Aaron, who was in charge of projects at the time, said today, she thought they were buying the devices from CompTech directly and that she had several concerns over the way it was all handled.

She may have had good reason to because right before her testimony, the district’s Chief Financial Officer Ronnie Collier told prosecutors he never authorized purchasing the computers.

From never seeing physical contracts to the invoice being way over what they had in the budget for technology, Canty-Aaron also testified she didn’t really know specifics of what was being ordered.

With all this taken into account the defense may face a hard next few days finding an alternative theory.

Prosecutors believe the rest of the witness testimonies will be relatively short with their two largest sources of evidence, Stephen and Shaw’s testimonies now on record. Court proceedings will continue tomorrow morning at 8:00.

Prosecutors also told Judge Marc Treadwell they plan to rest their case against Culver if not by tomorrow, Friday morning. Defense attorney John Garland says he believes they will rest by tomorrow.