An alert store owner and a quick response by police kept a Florida man from boarding a plane with an expensive ring in his pocket. Documents filed by the arresting officer also suggested that being in the right place at the right time also played a role.
Police were summoned to the retail space at the Crown Bay marine terminal by a security guard on Saturday afternoon, court documents said. Once on the scene, they interviewed the owner of JC Jewelers/Creations, who told them that one of his employees had informed him that one of the rings on display was missing. The owner told police he questioned the other workers in the store, then reviewed images from the store’s security camera.
What the owner saw, he shared with officers arriving at the store; images of a male leaning against a glass display case, then leaning over the counter to move a sliding door, reach in, and remove a ring. The owner said he was not sure which ring was taken but that it came from a display with items valued between $5,500 and $7,500. “(The owner) provided the undersigned with a copy of the surveillance footage,” said Officer Travis Wyatt.
After gathering information, Wyatt said he returned to his duty post at the Cyril E. King Airport, “where I observed a (sic) male matching the exact description of the male seen on surveillance removing the ring from the display case.”
The report then gave an account of how the officer engaged another officer from the Port Authority and confronted the suspect. Together, they escorted the man to the VIPA police precinct. Responding to interview questions, the suspect identified himself as Mark Andre Pigeon from Cape Coral, Fla.
When asked about the ring he allegedly took from JC Jewelers, Pigeon told police he sold it for $350 to cover the price of a plane ticket. Investigators visited the store where the suspect said he made the sale, but it was closed at the time.
Pigeon was arrested and charged with grand larceny and buying or receiving stolen property. He appeared in Superior Court Magistrate Division for an advice of rights hearing on Monday before Judge Sigrid Tejo.
An arraignment hearing is set for Jan. 9, 2026.

When the federal corruption trial of former V.I. Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and former Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal resumed Monday, the latter’s attorney grilled key testifier David Whitaker on statements he supposedly made to federal investigators after becoming a cooperating witness in September 2023.
Attorney Dale Lionel Smith asked whether it was true that Whitaker told Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that “the governor” was taking bribes. Whitaker did not confirm or deny the statement and asked about the date of the interview. Pressing forward, Smith said one of the first things Whitaker told investigators was that the governor of the Virgin Islands is corrupt.
“I may have said that,” Whitaker acknowledged.
Smith asked if Whitaker also told them that everyone in the government is corrupt. Whitaker said he had been nervous and didn’t remember but that he may have. In fact, Smith claimed, Whitaker told investigators that everyone was corrupt except for Anthony Thomas, the former V.I. Property and Procurement commissioner who later worked for Whitaker’s cybersecurity company, Mon Ethos Pro Support.
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. told the Source Monday that he would not comment on the ongoing trial.
Smith’s cross-examination turned toward listening devices that Whitaker admitted to planting in several government offices. Whitaker pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery in an agreement with prosecutors last year. One of the wire fraud charges stemmed from the $130,195 he billed to the V.I. Police Department after being hired to sweep the offices in 2022. Testifying during the trial of former Sports, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Calvert White and business-owner Benjamin Hendricks last summer, Whitaker said he planted the bugs at Martinez’s direction.
On Monday, Smith asked Whitaker if there was a time when he claimed to have found listening devices in 13 government offices.
“Yes, but I didn’t plant all of them,” Whitaker said. He did not say who planted the remainder of the devices.
Smith also questioned Whitaker about the media company he created, USVI News — which published an article about the listening devices — and why the subject of bugs never came up in Whitaker’s recorded conversations with Martinez and O’Neal. Smith asked why Whitaker didn’t want her to know that he and Martinez “were involved in a criminal conspiracy.”
“We were all involved in a criminal conspiracy,” Whitaker replied.
Martinez’s attorney, Miguel Oppenheimer, began questioning Whitaker on Friday afternoon before the court recessed for the weekend. On Monday, Oppenheimer attempted to bring Whitaker’s criminal history to the fore with questions about the listening devices, a fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan and a prior conviction in Rhode Island.
Whitaker pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and commercial bribery in 2008 for bilking millions from more than 80 customers and a credit card processing firm through a sham electronics equipment company. In 2009, he helped investigators secure a $500 million settlement from Google by setting up websites purporting to sell illegal pharmaceutical products through the search giant’s advertising platform. He was sentenced to spend 70 months in a federal prison in 2011.
Whitaker’s testimony concluded Monday afternoon. It was briefly interrupted by testimony from Jasmine Blyden, who described herself as a former friend of Martinez. According to the trial brief prosecutors filed in U.S. District Court, Blyden’s testimony was “regarding the conduct of Martinez relating to the drafting of the fabricated promissory note in June 2024.”
Jurors on Friday heard recordings in which Martinez outlined the plan to allegedly paint Whitaker’s various payments to him as a loan.
“But when the question’s posed of you, you say yeah, you remember, but you don’t know what you did with the document because it was given to you in your hand,” Martinez instructed during one of several conversations in which the two also discussed setting up new email accounts and destroying cellphones and laptops.
On Monday morning, Blyden testified that Martinez came over during that same time period and used her laptop for 15-20 minutes but that she didn’t know what he used it for.
Jurors on Monday also heard comparatively brief testimonies from Deputy Police Commissioner Jason Marsh, who acknowledged signing a Mon Ethos invoice in his capacity as acting commissioner, and Yacht Haven Grande general manager Charles Irons, who recalled receiving a wire transfer from David Whitaker to cover a security deposit for O’Neal’s coffee shop, Java Grande.
Mon Ethos also rented office space in Yacht Haven Grande, and Irons said it was “odd” to have one tenant make a payment on another’s behalf.
Other testifiers Monday included Miguel Moya, senior vice president of technology for FirstBank, who testified that all of the bank’s servers are located in Puerto Rico. Saul Lopez, a digital forensic examiner with the FBI, also based in Puerto Rico, provided brief testimony regarding the bureau’s digital investigative tools and a warrant the FBI obtained for an iCloud account over the course of its investigation.