The payments kept escalating: $3,010 in November 2001, $7,917 the following February, then two $25,000 checks in mid-March and early April.

In all, Peachtree City businessman R. Clay Harris paid more than $200,000 in 2001 and 2002 to a consulting company set up by the director of Atlanta Public Schools' technology department.

Harris, 56, said he hired the consulting firm to help grow his young technology company. But federal prosecutors said the payments were bribes intended to win lucrative school contracts.

On Thursday, a jury sided with the government, convicting Harris on five counts of federal conspiracy and bribery charges. Harris faces up to 45 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 22.

Harris declined to comment after the verdict was read. His attorneys said they would appeal.

U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias said the case should send a clear message.

"Business people who think they can bribe their way into contracts with school systems and government agencies face the risk of being caught and convicted," he said.

Prosecutors said the Atlanta school official, former technology director Arthur Scott, had control over a huge pot of federal "E-rate" technology grant money between 1998 and 2002. Scott doled out $60 million to a pool of high-tech vendors — including Harris' firm, Multimedia Communications Services Corp., or MCSC — who cabled classrooms and installed the powerful routers and switches needed to direct Internet traffic.

U.S. attorneys said Scott and his wife, Evelyn Myers Scott, set up a sham consulting company known as M & S Consulting that was used to solicit bribes.

Prosecutors said Scott didn't provide any work product for the nearly $200,000 Harris paid to the consulting company in 2002, and the Scotts apparently used $50,000 as a down payment on a new house.

During his 2 1/2-week trial, Harris testified he had hired M & S to advise him on how to expand his business, placing the firm on a monthly retainer. But prosecutors sought to expose the arrangement as highly unusual.

Harris could provide no written contract between MCSC and M & S, and checks were written by Harris himself rather than going through his company's billing department. The payments also abruptly stopped when Atlanta school officials decided to competitively bid out the E-rate work, effectively ending Scott's control of the program's purse strings.

Scott pleaded guilty last year to soliciting bribes and is serving a 37-month prison term.

He testified against Harris, telling jurors that he didn't do any work but just billed what he thought Harris would be willing to pay.

Scott, who left the Atlanta school system in 2003, admitted to taking $323,000 in bribes from vendors wanting a piece of the district's E-rate action.

Harris is the only vendor to face charges so far.

His trial may close the books on a troubling period for Atlanta Public Schools. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2004 reported on widespread abuses with the school system's E-rate program.

The newspaper found that the district chose vendors without competitive bidding, routinely paid too much for equipment and bought millions of dollars of top-shelf equipment that it didn't need.

The articles helped lead to a federal probe and the indictments of the Scotts and Harris.