A jury of Virgin Islanders heard opening statements Monday in the trial of Calvert White, the former Sports, Parks and Recreation commissioner, and Benjamin Hendricks, a business owner and government contractor, who in January were charged with wire fraud and soliciting bribes.
White and Hendricks have both pleaded not guilty to the charges, which stem from an alleged kickback scheme involving a contract to install security cameras at DSPR facilities throughout the territory. In its 15-page indictment, a grand jury alleged that White — with Hendricks as a go-between — steered the contract award to a company owned by convicted fraudster and government informant David Whitaker in exchange for a $16,000 kickback.
Instead of working for the people of the Virgin Islands, U.S. Justice Department trial attorney Lina Peng told jurors Monday, White chose to enrich himself. Peng walked jurors through evidence the government plans to present, which includes multiple recordings of conversations between White, Hendricks and Whitaker. In one instance, White was recorded allegedly showing Whitaker and Hendricks confidential bid information during a meeting at the V.I. Police Department Mobile Command Center on St. Croix in January 2024.
“I’ve been doing this a while, and I know the less evidence you have, the better you’ll be,” he told them after asking them not to take pictures of a document.
Whitaker subsequently wired Hendricks $5,000, according to the indictment, and marked the transfer as “Partial payment for the contract.” He later texted Hendricks to let him know that he had sent the wire “for Cal.”
At White’s urging, Whitaker lowered his company’s bid to make it more palatable to a Property and Procurement evaluation committee and more competitive with other bids. Whitaker and Hendricks discussed lowering the bid during a recorded call in February 2024.
“Yeah, I made a phone call to … an individual. Actually … one of the Senators,” Hendricks said, according to a transcript of the recording included in the indictment. “And he said ‘Benji, don’t worry about it.’”
That senator has not been identified in court documents, but according to Hendricks, he “said ‘They’ll get it.’”
The contract was eventually awarded to Whitaker’s company, Mon Ethos Pro Support, for $1.43 million, and White deposited $5,000 into his Banco Popular account 90 days after Whitaker wired that amount to Hendricks.
Based on their opening statements Monday, White and Hendricks’s respective attorneys will spend much of the potentially two-week trial attempting to convince jurors that Whitaker is an unreliable witness and informant. According to a plea agreement unsealed in U.S. District Court last September, Whitaker pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds for his role in a scheme allegedly involving former Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and former Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal.
Whitaker’s criminal history predates even those offenses. In 2008, he was arrested in Mexico and returned to the United States to face charges of stealing more than $10 million from customers by selling, but not delivering, electronics. While in Mexico, Whitaker allegedly made millions by selling steroids and human growth hormone on the black market. He received a drastically reduced five-year sentence after working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a sting operation that cost Google $500 million for its facilitation of illegal online drug sales. According to a Wired Magazine expose published in May 2013, Whitaker has been in and out of jail since he was first arrested for bank fraud and e-racketeering in 1997. He was 22 years old at the time.
White’s attorney, Clive Rivers, called Whitaker a “con man of the highest class” Monday, and Hendricks’s attorney, Darren John-Baptiste, walked jurors through Whitaker’s long history of working with law enforcement to attenuate the consequences of “fraud after fraud after fraud after fraud.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story misstated the name of David Whitaker’s company, Mon Ethos Pro Support.
