In memoranda filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to sentence former V.I. Police Commissioner Ray Martinez to up to 30 years in prison and former Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal to seven years following their conviction on charges of wire fraud, bribery and money laundering conspiracy. Martinez was also found guilty of obstructing justice.
Martinez’s sentencing is scheduled for June 9 and O’Neal’s is slated for June 11. On June 10, a judge will also sentence David Whitaker, a convicted felon and former cybersecurity contractor who became a cooperating witness in the government’s case against Martinez and O’Neal as well as the case against former Sports, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Calvert White and businessman Benjamin Hendricks.
Prosecutors first brought charges against Martinez and O’Neal last January. They accused Martinez of helping Whitaker secure a nearly $1.5 million VIPD contract funded through the American Rescue Plan Act. After the contract was awarded to Whitaker’s company, Mon Ethos Pro Support, he inflated multiple invoices for Martinez and O’Neal to authorize in exchange for things like kitchen equipment for Martinez’s restaurant — Don Felito’s Cookshop — tuition payment for his kids’ private school and a security deposit for O’Neal’s coffee shop, Java Grande.
The government’s sentencing recommendations came just days after U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney denied the pair’s requests for new trials. In a May 28 memorandum, Kearney said evidence shown at trial “overwhelmingly confirmed the officials’ disregard for the rule of law.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department trial attorney Alexandre Dempsey and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cherrisse Amaro wrote that Martinez should be sentenced to 292-365 months followed by three years of supervised release and pay a $250,000 fine.
“To abuse his cabinet position to benefit himself, Martinez cynically chose service to himself over service to his community,” they wrote. “In addition to its brazenness, the scheme damaged and undermined the government’s procurement integrity. Other companies who believed that they were competing on a level playing field — and citizens who thought that their public officials were maximizing their taxpayer dollars — both realize now that they have been deceived and cheated.”
Prosecutors added that after being confronted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Martinez reacted by attempting to destroy records and forge documents.
“The public was entitled to receive the defendant’s honest and faithful services, and it is evident that they received far less,” they wrote. “The defendant’s betrayal of his duty to the people of the Virgin Islands is a serious offense. He must be held accountable, particularly given his willingness to involve and direct others as part of his scheme and attempt to obstruct justice after the fact.”
Martinez, who is represented by attorneys Miguel Oppenheimer and Juan Matos de Juan, challenged the government’s sentencing calculus and asked Kearney for a five or six-year sentence. Oppenheimer and Matos de Juan said their own sentencing memorandum was “not primarily” about the arithmetic of sentencing guidelines.
“It is about Ray Martinez the person: a 57-year-old first-time offender who devoted more than three decades of his life to the people of the United States Virgin Islands as an Army soldier, an aircraft rescue firefighter, a labor relations officer, an internal affairs director, an intelligence director, and ultimately the Commissioner of the Virgin Islands Police Department,” they wrote. “He is a father, a husband, a son, and a neighbor who, even as the most senior law enforcement officer in the territory, continued to work the streets, respond to crime scenes, and feed the hungry.”
The attorneys also noted Martinez’s health. In 2023, Martinez underwent brain surgery in Boston. At trial, prosecutors showed jurors how Whitaker financed Martinez’s trips by paying for first-class airfare, stays at a lavish luxury resort and even a $1,082 dinner at an upscale steakhouse.
“The individual before this Court is someone whose life, before this case, was defined by service to others,” Oppenheimer and Matos de Juan wrote. “A sentence of 60 to 72 months constitutes serious, real punishment that accounts for the gravity of the offense without consigning a man of his age, health, and history to what would effectively be a death sentence inside the Bureau of Prisons.”
For O’Neal, prosecutors requested 84 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. A sentencing memorandum submitted by Dempsey and Amaro noted that O’Neal is “highly educated, professionally accomplished, and deeply experienced in government administration and finance” and that she earned a six-figure salary while occupying one of the most powerful positions in the Virgin Islands Government.
“She was not struggling for survival. She was not acting out of desperation. She was not manipulated into participating in conduct that she did not understand,” they argued, adding that O’Neal’s background is significant “because it demonstrates that she fully understood both the mechanics and the unlawfulness of the scheme.”
O’Neal had yet to file her own sentencing request by Tuesday evening.
