Attorneys for former V.I. Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and former Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal are slated to question cooperating witness David Whitaker when the former cabinet members’ federal corruption trial resumes Monday on St. Thomas.
The basic contours of the government’s case against Martinez and O’Neal have been widely known since January, when a federal grand jury indicted the pair on charges of wire fraud, bribery and money laundering for allegedly accepting thousands of dollars in kickbacks through a federally-funded contract for surveillance cameras awarded to Whitaker’s company, Mon Ethos Pro Support. According to the indictment, Martinez received more than $110,000 in bribes from Whitaker in the form of kitchen equipment for his restaurant, first-class airfare, luxury resort stays and tuition payments for his children’s private school.
The duo tried to mask the payments by claiming they were for a planned TV show called “Steak Out,” in which Martinez would cook steak while he and other officers discussed interesting cases.
Martinez allegedly helped Whitaker land a $1.4 million camera contract for the V.I. Police Department funded through the American Rescue Plan Act. O’Neal, prosecutors alleged, signed off on inflated invoices in exchange for $17,730 that Whitaker wired to cover the security deposit and two months’ rent for a coffee shop O’Neal planned to open in Yacht Haven Grande.
Whitaker took the witness stand just before noon Thursday but said little beyond confirming the veracity of dozens upon dozens of bank statements, text messages, and recorded conversations with Martinez and O’Neal, which he captured after becoming a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant in September 2023. Alex Dempsey, a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, largely let those recordings tell the story of Martinez and O’Neal’s alleged wrongdoing and occasionally asked Whitaker to elaborate on a particular episode.
Martinez alone faces two counts of obstructing justice, and jurors on Friday afternoon heard a series of recordings Whitaker captured after federal agents confiscated the former officials’ phones in June 2024.
In one June 13 call in which Martinez stated the need for “circling the wagons,” he outlined a scheme to backdate a promissory note and paint Whitaker’s earliest payments to him as a $10,500 loan, which Whitaker was instructed to tell investigators — with whom he had long been working — he misplaced.
“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.
Dempsey paused the recording to ask Whitaker if that was true.
“No,” he replied.
During another call, Martinez told Whitaker he hadn’t heard from O’Neal and appeared ready to turn on others as he tried to work out the scope of the federal investigation.
“I guess this, that’s this case, right? And if there’s no other coming accuser, we can be the informers,” he told Whitaker, whose priors as a federal collaborator were chronicled at length in a 2013 Wired Magazine feature article. “You and I.”
Over the course of that conversation, Martinez could be heard instructing Whitaker to “burn the phone, then” — which Whitaker said he understood to mean destroy his Android phone and replace it with an iPhone — and get rid of his laptop.
“Yeah, just destroy it,” Martinez said. “Destroy it, bro.”
After Whitaker reminded Martinez of the $4,100 he wired to Martinez’s wife, Diana, Martinez suggested playing it off as if Whitaker had been “sponsoring” their children.
“Now it’s just how you separate the contracts from that — that it doesn’t appear that I was giving contracts so that you could support me,” Martinez said.
During a subsequent recorded call on June 20, Whitaker asked Martinez if there was anything in writing about a time when Whitaker met Martinez at his restaurant and the two went for a drive, during which Martinez allegedly proposed trading gifts for the surveillance camera contract.
“No,” Martinez said. “Hell no.”
“I don’t think we would be that dumb,” Whitaker agreed.
Miguel Oppenheimer, one of two attorneys representing Martinez, had just started cross-examining Whitaker Friday afternoon before the court recessed for the weekend.
Where the government generally focused on the period of Martinez and O’Neal’s alleged wrongdoing, Oppenheimer repeatedly tried to bring Whitaker’s extensive criminal history to the fore. Those attempts were largely overruled by U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney because several of Whitaker’s prior convictions and crimes occurred more than 20 years ago.
Under questioning by Oppenheimer, Whitaker testified that he met Martinez through a mutual friend and that his first job was to investigate people who either had a problem with Martinez — or with whom Martinez had a problem. Those included a police officer, former Sen. Janelle Sarauw and current Senate Majority Leader Kurt Vialet, Whitaker testified.
Jurors heard Whitaker describe how he was hired to find listening devices in various government offices — including the Personnel Division, Labor Department, Management and Budget Office and Government House — which he himself planted before “finding.” Jurors in this case have not yet heard what Whitaker acknowledged on the witness stand last summer while testifying in the case against former Sports, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Calvert White and business-owner Benjamin Hendricks: that he began planting bugs at Martinez’s direction.
Whitaker pleaded guilty to wire fraud and bribery in an agreement with prosecutors last year.
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