Jurors hear testimonies from Dallemand and Tourand in Culver Trial

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Day four in federal court for the Culver trial took jury members deeper into the prosecution’s theory on what they believe was a master plan that involved many.

But based on sworn testimonies, only a few seem to have really known what was happening.

Pieces of the narrative continued to come together in the criminal case that resumed on Thursday against Isaac Culver–a man prosecutors believe helped defraud the Bibb County School District of millions of dollars.

Jurors heard from several witnesses including two major players in this case–former Bibb Schools Superintendent Romain Dollemand and the late Tom Tourand.

Tourand was the district’s Director of Information and Technology during that time.

Romain Dallemand testified that when he took on his former role as superintendent of schools, the district was “a mess” with outdated technology barely getting teachers and student by.

He claims it was Culver and Tom Tourand, who brought him the idea of NComputing and the multimillion dollar invoice for those L300 devices.

However, Tourand testified, in his deposition, that he was only acting under the instruction of Dallemand when he went against district policy and signed off on purchase orders well over $500,000.

The equipment they got was virtually useless with no one to install it and no software included.

The prosecution closed with the testimony of Raymond F. Kyle–a white collar crimes investigator.

According to Kyle’s findings in the case, distribution of the $3.7 million ultimately came down to five transactions.

First, the school district wired CompTech $3.7 million. Roughly $16,000 of that went toward GSA schedule fees.

Then, two wire transfers of $2.1 million and $1.5 million went from CompTech to Progressive Consulting within days of each other.

Only $1.7 million of that $3.7 million went to ‘NComputing’ for the devices. The rest, totaling $268,000, went into checks made out to two people. One of those people was Dave Carty and the other–Isaac Culver.

Kyle was the last witness to testify in court on Thursday before the prosecution officially rested its case. The defense did attempt to get charges dismissed due to “insufficient evidence of fraud” based on the indictment, but that request was denied. Court proceedings will continue tomorrow morning at 8:00.

Dallemand also testified that he pleaded guilty to tax evasion in a Florida courtroom last August.

In exchange for immunity in all other pending cases including this one, he took a plea deal agreeing to provide full disclosure in this case and others.