Kay Gow: Contractor dispute was the downfall of VR Labs

Kay Gow and her defense attorney talked about this big dream of VR Labs and how the steps they took were supposed to make that vision a reality. But instead, several big bumps got in the way.

It was a long day for Kay Gow as she spent seven hours on the stand Tuesday to defend her company.

Kay and her husband Robert own VR Labs. It is a company accused of defrauding Lee County taxpayers after winning a $5 million grant.

Through the grant, the Gows were supposed to build a production facility for its health products and bring hundreds of jobs to the county.

However, those jobs never came. People were not getting paid and Lee County sounded the alarm.

Tuesday, Kay and her attorney blamed a contractor dispute for the downfall of VR Labs.

Kay said the contractor that built the facility spent more than its budget, complained when they did not get paid the additional money and eventually started filing liens, which led to bad publicity.

Kay’s attorney went through a variety of finances, agreements, receipts and more to show the Gow’s had good intentions to move forward with their company.

The defense also addressed the prosecutions’ argument that a production line was never built in the facility.

Kay said they could not wait any longer for their partner to make the production line software and instead had to outsource to make the initial batch of products.