Police chief resigns amid federal investigation | News

According to media reports, O’Neal received a “target” letter as part of the investigation. When the Daily News pressed her this morning, she was still employed by the Bryan administration.

“The government has been informed that Ray Martinez, the head of the Virgin Islands Police Department, is involved in an ongoing federal investigation,” Government House Communications Director Richard Motta Jr. said in a statement at 1:22 p.m. Sunday. “In keeping with our zero-tolerance policy toward corruption, the Governor has accepted Mr. Martinez’s resignation to ensure the integrity of our law enforcement efforts.”

Motta added: “We will fully cooperate with the federal government’s investigation and are committed to maintaining the highest standards of transparency and accountability within the Virgin Islands government.”

Motta said he had no information about reports that O’Neal also received a “target letter” from the FBI.

“Ray Martinez has submitted his resignation and the Governor has accepted it. I have no further information at this time other than this and the statement I made previously. We will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. in lieu of the weekly press conference and will announce any further information then,” Motta wrote.

Motta did not respond to questions about a report in an online newspaper that cited anonymous sources and noted that the investigation is focused on “a cybersecurity and surveillance contract that the VIPD awarded to a company that allegedly provided money to Martinez for a restaurant he plans to open on St. Thomas” and “whether the contract was awarded with federal ARPA funds and whether any O’Neal family member has an interest in the company that received the contract.”

The VI government has paid cybersecurity and surveillance firm Mon Ethos Pro Support $3.31 million since August 2022, including $1.77 million from the Office of Management and Budget using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, according to publicly available spending reports on the Transparency.vi.gov website.

According to reports, the VI Police Department has so far paid Mon Ethos $1.54 million, using assets and general fund funds to repay the department’s excessive use of force consent decree.

Mon Ethos Pro Support is led by David Whitaker, a convicted felon who made headlines for helping the federal government negotiate a $500 million settlement with Google, which earned him a reduced 70-month prison sentence for fraud in 2011.

Whitaker could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

According to documents obtained by The Daily News, Whitaker’s company was hired to investigate recording devices found in government offices in May 2022. On Sunday, the VI Water and Power Authority confirmed that the agency had hired Mon Ethos to search for more devices on the recommendation of the police department.

“Mon Ethos apparently led the search for bugs/listening devices in the affected government offices. When Mon Ethos conducted the work at WAPA, they were accompanied by VIPD officers and monitored by the internal WAPA IT team. The cost included $15,000 for the STT offices, $5,000 for the STX offices and $1,500 for the Mon Ethos team to travel from STT to STX, including VIPD with the necessary equipment,” WAPA spokesperson Shanell Petersen told The Daily News when reached.

Petersen said in an email that WAPA employees had not received any notice of the FBI investigation. She added that while a WAPA badge is visible on the company’s website, “Mon Ethos has not asked to use the WAPA logo on their website.”

The discovery of the recording devices was not publicly announced until August 2022, when Martinez held a press conference to explain the presence of FBI investigators at the OMB.

Since the press conference, Martinez and other government officials have not responded to questions about the status of the investigation.

Over the next year, however, Mon Ethos received payments totaling $1.46 million, all without a government contract, according to publicly available spending records.

Bryan and Martinez signed a $1.49 million contract with Whitaker and Mon Ethos in October, six months after Whitaker hired former government real estate and procurement commissioner Anthony Thomas as “vice president of strategic alliances and contracts.”

On October 25, Krythemer Edmead, deputy commissioner of the Department of Property and Procurement, provided a copy of the full contract between VI Police and Mon Ethos Pro Support in response to a Daily News request for public records.

The 40-page agreement, which expires in September, includes an extensive list of technology and cybersecurity services, as well as specific tasks such as “assessing cybersecurity risks for senior government officials.”

The company is also authorized to assist VIPD in “managing and monitoring security operations centers to detect and respond to cyber threats.”

The contract includes a price list for services ranging from $300 to $1,200 per hour.

The $1.49 million contract included a 25% upfront payment of $372,420 to purchase equipment and hire personnel. In addition, the contract provides for travel expenses of up to $134,564.

The Ministry of Property and Procurement recently issued a new tender for the installation of surveillance cameras under a contract with the VI Police, which begins on June 24.

The Department of Real Estate and Procurement did not respond to subsequent requests for documents related to the contracts between Whitaker and the government after Education Commissioner Dionne Wells-Hedrington testified before the Senate in November: “The St. Croix District has contracted Mon Ethos Pro Support, LLC to install 929 cameras in all District schools and programs at a cost of approximately $2 million.”

The contract is not posted on the Property and Procurement website, but The Daily News has obtained a copy of the document, which provides for $1.9 million in compensation to Mon Ethos for installing a video surveillance system at St. Croix schools.

Bryan signed the contract on Feb. 28, and Wells-Hedrington also signed the agreement along with Whitaker. The Department of Education has not responded to questions from the Daily News about whether schools will proceed with installing cameras under the contract and how much money the company has received so far.