Eight men pleaded not guilty in federal court in Rome on Monday to accusations they defrauded Temple-Inland Inc. to the tune of $4.8 million in nonexistent timber deliveries.

Aaron Wilbert Freeman, 49, of Rome is accused of pioneering a plan to manipulate the weighing station at the plant on Mays Bridge Road to produce additional “phantom” timber shipments and receive money for those deliveries.

“The conspiracy caused (Temple-Inland) to pay timber brokers more than $4.8 million for tractor-trailer loads of timber that did not exist, and the defendants received and shared approximately $4.2 million of that money,” the indictment states.

Between June 2003 and June 2006, Freeman — an employee at the paper mill — worked in the scale house where tractor-trailers were weighed as they brought loads of timber to the mill.

Temple-Inland receives timber deliveries 24 hours a day and when a driver reaches the mill he stops the truck on a scale and the operator, a “scaler,” measures the weight of the truck and the load. After the drivers deliver their loads they weigh out and the scaler measures the empty weight, the difference being the weight of the load delivered.

This information is sent to a data processing center in Texas and the contract timber brokers are credited for the delivery and money is deposited in that broker’s account.

According to the indictment, Freeman allegedly manipulated the scales to produce two weight readings for a single delivery — generating additional payments to conspiring timber brokers who then forwarded the money back to the others — and recruited drivers to participate in the scheme.

An unidentified witness, a cooperating timber broker, stated in the indictment he received the funds from several of the drivers during a two-year period and paid them in checks that ranged from several thousand dollars to more than $100,000.

Kevin Fields, 31, of Forsyth, Jason Joseph, 32, and Curtis Hart, 52, both of Macon; Roger Carthern, 63, and Andrew Carthern, 40, both of Jefferson; J. David Carthern, 64, of Commerce; Robert Frank Ferguson Jr., 56, of Maysville; and George Tate, 40, of Hartwell, are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Freeman, Fields, Hart and Joseph are also charged with several counts of aiding and abetting each other to commit wire fraud.

All the crimes are punishable by as many as 20 years imprisonment and $250,000 fine.

Eight out of nine of the alleged co-conspirators waived formal arraignment and pleaded not guilty to wire fraud charged in U.S. District Court in Rome in front of Magistrate Judge Walter Johnson.

Joseph is scheduled for arraignment Nov. 9 at 10 a.m.

A pre-trial hearing for a majority of the defendants is scheduled for Nov. 19 at 10 a.m.

Click here to read an official Department of Justice press release about this case.

Click here to read a PDF of the indictment.