It was finally Ted James Johnson Jr.'s turn to speak.

Since 2004, when the collapse of his investment businesses cost clients millions of dollars, and more recently as federal prosecutors indicted him on dozens of charges linked to securities fraud, attorneys had advised him not to say anything, he said.

The lifelong Giles County resident and former county official was not able to associate with old friends because he owed them money, and bankruptcy procedures barred contact with creditors, he said. Similarly, he started going to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints services in West Virginia because too many members at the Mormon church in Pearisburg had lost money with him, he said.

For the past two weeks in federal court in Roanoke, Johnson has had to keep quiet as witness after witness has told of giving money to his Mountain Investments and Dogwood Farms businesses, being promised high returns, receiving payments for a time, then losing their principal and much of the promised interest.

But it was Johnson's turn Tuesday. Taking the witness stand for almost three and a half hours, he spoke smoothly and rapidly, gesturing with his hands and saying he never meant to swindle anyone.

Over and over, Johnson said he meant to repay what he owed.

Johnson, who was Giles County's commissioner of the revenue and circuit court clerk before he launched a series of financial businesses in 1992, is accused of taking millions of dollars that he said he would invest in commodities or futures trading. Instead, he and his partner, Frank Graham Farrier Jr., used money from new investors to make payments to previous investors to keep up the illusion of returns, while taking much of the money for their personal expenses, Farrier testified earlier in the trial. What little money they did try to trade with resulted in 10 straight years of losses.

But Johnson said he never promised to invest in the markets. Instead, the "so-called investors," as he called them at one point in his testimony, were making personal loans to him and receiving in return notes that promised interest rates as high as 28 percent.

"Are you saying these people just gave you money without any explanation of what it was for?" Assistant U.S. Attorney David Bybee asked incredulously.

"Yes, sir," Johnson replied.

He said his companies were involved in land development as well as market trading. If the trading did not work out, he said, he figured he could repay people by selling more than 200 acres he controlled around the Pearisburg Wal-Mart.

He said that for the past two years he has worked with his wife for a custodial service.

He said his 8,000-square-foot home should not be seen as "a palatial mansion implying that I'm up there living a life of luxury." Some of the house's four heat pumps do not work, Johnson said, and to keep warm he cuts wood for a stove his sister gave him. The house has been in foreclosure four times, he said.

Johnson keeps a daily journal as part of his faith. Prosecutors have shown excerpts throughout the trial, highlighting entries that show Johnson was taking money but not trading it on the markets.

Johnson said jurors should consider what he said were thousands of entries across the years saying that he wanted to pay people back.

His attorney, Tony Anderson of Roanoke, walked him through a series of entries, concluding with one from September 2001: "I am now pleading with the Lord for mercy and something to trade. I want to pay what I owe."

Johnson's defense rested after calling two character witnesses. Closing arguments are scheduled for today.