Dallemand, others at center of multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by school district

Eight days after replacing the Bibb County school system’s chief financial officer, former Superintendent Romain Dallemand pressured the new CFO to make two wire transfers of public funds totaling more than $7 million in purchases without school board approval and against district policy, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The federal lawsuit alleges that Dallemand and others participated in a series of fraudulent acts, racketeering, wire fraud and mail fraud while also violating school district policies. Those actions were part of a pattern that cost the Bibb County school system millions of dollars for unneeded or nonexistent services or products, the school district’s suit said.

Contacted Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a criminal investigation.

Many of the lawsuit’s contentions were included in a 2014 state investigation that said the purchase of millions of dollars in technology equipment and services without competitive bids or school board approval signaled possible collusion among Bibb County school officials and several vendors they did business with.

Defendants named in the suit include: Dallemand; the system’s former executive director of technology, Thomas Tourand; Progressive Consulting Technologies Inc. and its CEO, Isaac Culver III; CompTech Computer Technologies Inc. and its president and CEO, Ellen J. Stephen III; and Pinnacle/CSG Inc. and its president, Cory McFarlane.

Bibb schools spokeswoman Stephanie Hartley issued a statement Thursday saying the school board’s decision to file the suit came after much deliberation.

Since Dallemand’s departure in 2013, new policies and regulations have been established, she said, and the system now has a procurement office to monitor contracts and the processes involving vendors. A new executive director of capital programs oversees education sales tax funding and an assistant superintendent of technology offers advice about implementing interactive technology in classrooms, she said.

“We have learned from this experience, and since then have put into place policies, regulations, and procedures to ensure as best we can this situation never happens again,” the statement read in part.

Board President Lester Miller said people “want the truth to come out.”

He added, “We don’t take this lightly. It’s not something that we would file without believing that we were in a good situation. ... This is just a search for justice to find out what happened to those monies, because it’s taxpayer dollars.”

Technical project

Dallemand was hired Feb. 1, 2011, a little more than a year after Bibb County voters passed an extension of an education sales tax initiative to fund school district capital improvement projects, including technology upgrades.

In 2012, Dallemand “hand-picked” Thomas Tourand, the city of Macon’s former manager of information technology, as the district’s new executive director of technology despite Tourand’s being interviewed by a panel of administrators and not recommended for the position, according to the lawsuit.

On the same day — and in a similar manner — Dallemand also hired Cheryl Canty-Aaron as capital program administrator.

The lawsuit maintains that Dallemand “manipulated the hiring process” to ensure that new employees such as Tourand and Canty-Aaron “felt obligated” to support him and “enable him to maneuver around board policy” to defraud the school district of taxpayer money.

Tourand, who had received an employment reference from Macon-based Progressive Consulting Technologies CEO Isaac Culver, and Canty-Aaron served on a panel that selected Progressive to upgrade the school district’s technology.

After a recommendation from Dallemand and Tourand, the school board authorized Dallemand to negotiate a contract for technical management services and “E-rate” construction projects, according to the suit.

The school district contends that Dallemand made an agreement with Progressive that contained a schedule of hourly rates significantly higher than the rates quoted a week earlier — and before the school board gave Dallemand permission to negotiate the contract. The school district contends it was never informed of the new rates or of the agreement.

Although the school district paid $500,000 for “contract services on technology infrastructure,” the school district didn’t see a significant improvement in technology, according to the suit.

Within a couple of months, Dallemand removed Ron Collier from his position as chief financial officer after Collier expressed concerns about the superintendent’s spending of public money.

Eight days later, on Dec. 18, 2012, Tourand authorized another $500,000 to be paid to Progressive with Dallemand’s approval, but without soliciting bids or seeking school board approval, according to the suit.

Asked about the lawsuit Thursday, Tourand said: "I don't know anything about it so I really don't have any comment."

Attempts to reach Culver, who recently was named incoming chairman of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, were unsuccessful Thursday, as were attempts to reach Dallemand and other defendants named in the suit.

Pinnacle

In violation of school board policy, no bids for accounting and financial software were solicited and no requests for proposals were advertised before Dallemand, Tourand and Culver chose to purchase $3.2 million in software from Pinnacle, a Florida-based construction company with which Culver and Progressive had close ties, according to the suit.

The school district contends that an invoice submitted by Pinnacle on Dec. 13, 2012, was fraudulent in that the number of items ordered was based on the number of students enrolled instead of the number of employees who would be using the software.

The district alleges that Dallemand, Tourand, Progressive, Culver, Pinnacle and McFarlane fraudulently caused Bibb County schools to overpay for unneeded items.

On Dec. 18, 2012, just before winter break and a little more than a week after Dallemand removed Collier from his position, Dallemand, Tourand, Progressive and Culver demanded that Collier’s replacement wire $3.2 million to Pinnacle. The employee wired the funds the next day after voicing concerns that school board policy required checks to be issued for payment.

To date, Pinnacle hasn’t provided the software, just an inexpensive blank server, according to the suit.

CompTech

Without soliciting bids or obtaining school board approval, Progressive, Culver, Dallemand and Tourand decided to buy 15,000 “NComputing” devices, virtual desktop computers that enable multiple users to share a single operating system, according to the lawsuit.

Hours after an employee was pressured to wire $3.2 million to Pinnacle, Dallemand, Tourand, Progressive and Culver “improperly, illegally and without authority directed, coerced, manipulated and demanded” that the employee wire CompTech $3.7 million, again without school board approval and in violation of school district policy, according to the suit.

Again, after expressing concerns and in fear for her job, the employee wired the money a few days later.

Shortly after receiving the money, CompTech wired all but $50,000 to Progressive, which then paid “substantially less” than the $3,718,000 it received from CompTech to another company to buy the devices, according to the suit.

CompTech wasn’t involved in the installation of 300 units that were deployed at Northeast High, although the company was paid $351,750 for installation. The installed devices don’t operate properly, and the others are still stored in a school district warehouse, according to the lawsuit.

Dallemand asked the school board to buy out his contract Jan. 17, 2013, and after a period of negotiation, the board agreed to pay Dallemand more than $300,000.

The school district contends that Dallemand timed the two wire transfers knowing that there would be new people on the school board in January and that he would soon be asking the group to buy out his contract.

The district is seeking the payment of no less than $7,365,200. In some counts, the district is seeking three times the actual damages incurred plus punitive damages, interest and attorney fees.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Dallemand, others at center of multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by school district."