Interesting turn of events there.. Hopefully it's not correlated. Did the turbo fail right after? Either way, sounds like maybe get a ECM with a stock tune/file.. and get the truck running if you're not able to get it going with the delete file.
Is this friend a mechanic ? I hope not if so... Most of the time people just do not know what they are talking about sadly.
As @1shadowsabre said, you can buy an entire motor for that amount money.
How big? You can put it on something like Dropbox or a file hosting service, and share the link. Otherwise, if you email it to me I can put it on the server and give everyone a link.. Let me know!