A federal judge sentenced former Sports, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Calvert White to five years in prison on Thursday, followed by three years of supervised release. Business owner Benjamin Hendricks, whom prosecutors described at trial in July as a “middleman, helper, aider and abettor” in the kickback scheme between White and David Whitaker — a former government contractor, convicted felon and cooperating government witness in multiple public corruption cases — was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.
A jury found both guilty of honest services wire fraud and bribery concerning a federally funded program, but U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney explained over the course of two sentencing hearings Thursday that their terms of imprisonment were based on factors like their respective roles in the scheme and their criminal histories. Guidelines set by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which are meant to advise sentencing judges but aren’t mandatory, initially recommended ranges of 151-188 months of incarceration for White and 108-135 months for Hendricks. Those ranges were lowered Thursday to 97-121 months and 70-87 months, respectively.
The reduction was triggered by an email to a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent from Curtis Jones, who took ownership of Mon Ethos after Whitaker pleaded guilty to wire fraud and bribery in 2024. Asked to describe the costs associated with the DSPR security camera contract awarded to Mon Ethos, Jones reportedly said the company would have had to spend approximately $600,000 on hardware and another $600,000 on labor and other costs out of a $1.43 million contract.
“It was a bad bid price,” Jones reportedly wrote. Calculated that way, Mon Ethos’s costs would have put the net benefit to Whitaker at less than $250,000, which lowered the sentencing recommendation.
Kearney went lower still when he announced White’s sentence, which came after testimonials from supporters, including attorney Kye Walker, who said she was involved in vetting White for the role of Sports, Parks and Recreation commissioner, and V.I. Veterans Affairs Office Director Patrick Farrell.
White himself also addressed the court. Despite having done “hundreds and hundreds” of public speaking engagements, he said, Thursday’s was the most difficult. After apologizing to his family, White noted his years of working with young Virgin Islanders and called it his calling to work with the territory’s youth.
“This is not the vision that I had,” he said after apologizing to them. “This is not the role model that I wish to set for those children.”
Kearney credited White for his contrition and his outreach work but weighed it against the version of the former commissioner heard in taped conversations recorded by Whitaker in which White said things like, “I have seen people lose a job, seen people gone to jail over something like this. I’ve been doing this a while, and I know the less evidence you have, the better you’ll be.”
“What is so concerning about this crime is … how cavalier this came to you,” Kearney said Thursday. “That is, how easy it was for you to do this.”
White was not ordered to pay a fine but was ordered to forfeit $5,000 — the same amount Whitaker transferred, through Hendricks, into one of White’s bank accounts as an initial payment for the camera contract. He was ordered to self-surrender on March 2.
Shortly after, Kearney acknowledged during Hendricks’s sentencing hearing that White was the one who steered a lucrative surveillance camera contract to Whitaker’s company, Mon Ethos Pro Support, in exchange for a $16,000 payout while Hendricks “went along to get along” in part because Whitaker owed his company money for work they performed. Hendricks’s presentence investigation report also noted that he was previously convicted of wire fraud in 2005 and that he spent two years in prison, which was not mentioned at trial. Kearney indicated that he was obligated to take that into account.
“The problem with being in the middle of all this is just that,” Kearney said. And later, “You sleep with the bedbugs….”
Hendricks was also sentenced to three years of supervised release after his term of imprisonment and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine. He was ordered to self-surrender on March 13.
