Brett “Mac” McClafferty, who is running for delegate to Congress while free on bail on grand larceny charges, filed an emergency motion Monday in V.I. Superior Court on St. Thomas, seeking permission to travel to St. Croix to meet with a landlord for a potential campaign headquarters.
McClafferty told the court in his motion that he had a 6 p.m. meeting with the landlord, had not secured overnight lodging but hoped to at the Buccaneer Resort, and would return to St. Thomas on Tuesday.
“It is necessary that the meeting be held today, May 18, 2026, or Defendant will lose this opportunity,” the motion stated.
There was no reply from the court on the docket Monday night, and it is unclear whether Judge Denise M. Francois granted McClafferty’s motion.
Monday’s motion followed one he filed Friday, asking the court to modify his pretrial release conditions that prevent him from leaving the St. Thomas-St. John District, and thus campaigning for office on St. Croix.
McClafferty, the co-owner of St. Thomas Social, a restaurant in Yacht Haven Grande, said that as a candidate for office he needs to search for a suitable campaign headquarters on St. Croix, “as well as a location for a St. Croix Social.”
“With his current release conditions, Defendant will not be able to effectively campaign or discover a campaign headquarters and must respectfully request that the Court modify his conditions of release to allow him to freely travel to St. Croix only in his role as a candidate for Congressional delegate,” according to Friday’s motion.
McClafferty was arrested Feb. 21 by the Virgin Islands Police Department’s Economic Crime Unit in connection with an $888,500 fraud investigation. Authorities allege that between January and June 2024, McClafferty deposited counterfeit and fictitious checks — including instruments drawn on entities in the British Virgin Islands — and issued bank drafts that were later returned for insufficient funds or subject to stop-payment requests. Police say funds were withdrawn and wired to third parties before the instruments were returned unpaid.
McClafferty — charged with grand larceny, passing or possession of forged bills, obtaining money by false pretenses, making and passing fictitious bills and notes, and drawing and delivering worthless checks — pleaded not guilty at his arraignment March 13 in Magistrate Court on St. Thomas and is free on $150,000 bail. He subsequently filed a lawsuit against Banco Popular, accusing it of negligence, defamation, abuse of process, false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The same day as his arraignment, McClafferty announced his run for Virgin Islands Senate in a Facebook post. However, he dropped that campaign after Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes sought a legal opinion from Attorney General Gordon Rhea on whether candidates with felony records — McClafferty spent three years behind bars in Ohio on felony fraud and theft charges but said those convictions were overturned on appeal and resolved through misdemeanor pleas — may run for public office.
While McClafferty asserted that he was eligible, he announced he would instead campaign for the territory’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where having a criminal history is not a disqualifier.
However, among the conditions of his release on the bank fraud charges, McClafferty may not travel outside the St. Thomas-St. John District without permission of the court, leaving him unable, for now, to take his campaign to St. Croix.
A discovery conference in the case was set for May 7 but was postponed to June 23 after McClafferty received permission to travel to California from May 4 to 10 to help a cousin who was recovering from surgery.
McClafferty mentioned that trip in his motion to modify the conditions of his release, writing that he followed the court’s rules in that instance and is not a flight risk “as he has ties to the community and has no intention of abandoning his life and family in St. Thomas.”
Judge Francois had not ruled on McClafferty’s motion as of Monday night. However, Assistant Attorney General Patricia Lynn Prior “advised that she objects to this request without further explanation,” the motion stated.
McClafferty also has Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 cases pending in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. A confirmation hearing was set for Monday in the Chapter 13 case, which the trustee has argued should be dismissed or converted to Chapter 7 because McClafferty has debts of $3.6 million that “significantly exceed” the statutory thresholds, he has “failed to provide a full and candid disclosure of his financial condition,” and may be shielding his assets and income from the trustees and creditors.
Additionally, 17 of his alleged victims — investors in his defunct Mac Private Equity firm who say their money vanished, including two who were awarded judgments in Virgin Islands court — have joined the call to convert the Chapter 13 case.
In an objection to their motion, McClafferty said they “attempt to transform a disputed business relationship with a corporate entity into personal liability of the Debtor and, in doing so, rely on unproven allegations of fraud, selective characterizations of prior litigation, and assumptions regarding intent that are unsupported by a developed evidentiary record.”
The outcome of the Chapter 13 confirmation hearing was not available on the court docket as of Monday night.
