As former VIPD commissioner Ray Martinez heads to trial Wednesday on federal wire fraud and bribery charges along with his co-defendant, former Office of Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal, just what evidence he may present about the criminal background of the government’s key witness remains to be determined.
In an order Monday, District Court Judge Mark Kearney said he would defer a decision about Martinez’s motion to admit David Whitaker’s 2008 conviction on wire fraud and bribery charges in the Eastern District of Rhode Island until after hearing oral argument at 9 a.m. Wednesday, “not exceeding 20 minutes.”
In the same order, he precluded Martinez from mentioning or introducing evidence of Whitaker’s April 1998 and March 2000 convictions in the Eastern District of Louisiana, “absent the witness or United States opening the door on this issue,” or Whitaker’s 1997 Louisiana state court charges and “other identified prior bad acts.”
Martinez and O’Neal are each charged with five counts of honest services wire fraud, which each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; one count of federal program bribery, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years; and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Martinez is also charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, which each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
An indictment unsealed in January alleges the pair accepted bribes from then-government contractor turned FBI informant Whitaker, who subsequently admitted to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds in a plea deal with prosecutors unsealed in September 2024. His sentencing is currently scheduled for June 10, 2026.
A final pre-trial conference last week focused mainly on a motion that Martinez’s court-appointed attorneys filed Nov. 21, well past the court’s Nov. 4 deadline for all pretrial motions, seeking to introduce Whitaker’s long felony history.
Kearney admonished them for their tardiness, noting that “it takes about half a second on a Google search to find out about Mr. Whitaker. Is the answer that ‘I’m a busy guy’? Is that the answer? ‘I didn’t get to this’?” the judge asked Miguel Oppenheimer, who is representing Martinez along with Juan F. Matos de Juan, both of Puerto Rico.
While Whitaker’s criminal background has been widely reported, including by the Source, Oppenheimer said his office only realized the extent of it as they began preparing for trial in earnest a few weeks ago. Once an FBI background check confirmed the information they were finding online, they filed the motion to admit Whitaker’s prior convictions beyond the usual 10-year time limit.
Wednesday’s oral argument will concern the admissibility of Whitaker’s 2008 arrest, when he was nabbed in Mexico and returned to the United States to face a multicount fraud complaint of bilking customers out of more than $10 million by selling, but never delivering, electronic equipment. While on the lam south of the border, he allegedly made millions of dollars by selling black-market steroids and human growth hormones online. Facing 65 years behind bars on the fraud charges, Whitaker became an FBI operative in a sting that eventually saw Google fined $500 million for its role in facilitating online illegal drug sales. Whitaker subsequently got five years on the fraud charges.
Whitaker, who is expected to testify for eight to 10 hours about his alleged fraud scheme with Martinez and O’Neal, was described as a “career conman” in an expose of his escapades by Wired magazine in May 2013, having been in and out of jail since he was first arrested for bank fraud and e-racketeering in 1997 when he was 22.
“Every time he left prison, Whitaker would go right back to his usual patterns, which were only enabled by the chaotic spread of ecommerce. He could create a company almost as quickly as he could think of it, and he never had to meet customers face-to-face. He started printing businesses, telecommunications companies, auto resellers,” the magazine wrote.
The government has opposed Martinez’s motion to introduce that long criminal history, calling it untimely and noting that convictions “more than 10 years old are presumptively inadmissible to impeach a testifying witness. For the conviction to be admissible, the court must decide that the probative value ‘substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect.’”
Moreover, “the government has no intention of presenting the cooperating witness, Whitaker, ‘as a man who should be trusted,’” it said. “In fact, the government has charged the witness for the same crimes charged in this case, along with two additional, unrelated fraud schemes.”
As for witnesses he might call, Martinez’s attorneys said in a filing Tuesday that while “the defense has not identified any person we may call as witness,” it listed people it “has interviewed and/or will be interviewing.”
That list includes Anthony Thomas, who was vice president of strategic alliance and contracts for Whitaker’s now-defunct company, Mon Ethos Pro Support; Ludrick Thomas, who served for a short time as the St. Thomas-St. John police chief; Dwight Griffith, a V.I. Police sergeant; VIPD Commissioner Mario Brooks, and Naomi Joseph, deputy chief of police for St. Croix. “All the previously mentioned could be identified in a defendant’s case in chief or called as witnesses for the defense,” the notice stated. “As always, the defendant, Mr. Martinez, reserves his right to testify at trial if he deems necessary.”
O’Neal’s attorney, Dale Lionel Smith, who is from the U.S. Virgin Islands and based in New York City, stated that “there is no person she may call as a witness in her case-in-chief.”
Both notices were due on Monday and filed a day late, which Kearney noted in an order Tuesday granting Martinez and O’Neal until 3 p.m. to comply “or show cause in memoranda not exceeding five pages as to why we should not impose a sanction, including a monetary sanction, or waiver of challenges in jury selection, upon a noncompliant Defendant.”
Jury selection is slated to begin Wednesday, followed by opening arguments, with the first witness expected to take the stand at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. The government has said it expects to wrap up its case by Dec. 10.
St. Croix Source
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