The V.I. Justice Department and lawyers representing the company Mon Ethos Pro Support have until Tuesday to come up with a plan to hand over information and material to the Virgin Islands Police Department that the company possessed as part of its cybersecurity contract with the VIPD.
That order came Friday morning at the end of a hearing in V.I. Superior Court before Judge Carol Thomas-Jacobs.
It was the second time this week the court has ruled in the apparent payment dispute between the V.I. Police Department and Mon Ethos, which the Justice Department has likened to a hostage situation.
On Thursday, Thomas-Jacobs granted its motion for a temporary restraining order, or TRO, against Mon Ethos over the objection of company founder David Whitaker, who has denied wrongdoing.
The Justice Department filed a complaint against Whitaker and Mon Ethos on July 2 along with the motion for a TRO and preliminary and permanent injunction, alleging his company breached its contract for cybersecurity services with the VIPD and was threatening to delete data critical to ongoing investigations and court cases if its payment demands were not met.
According to the verified complaint, Mon Ethos demanded payment of $479,795 on June 15 for previous work “and threatened that data would be ‘lost’ if payment was not immediately remitted.” It was around the same time that the FBI announced that Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and Office of Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal were the targets of a federal investigation regarding the government’s contract with Mon Ethos. Within days, both officials had resigned.
According to publicly available records, the V.I. government has paid $3.31 million to Mon Ethos since August 2022, including $1.7 million from the Office of Management and Budget and $1.5 million from the V.I. Police Department. The contract was awarded despite the fact that Whitaker is a convicted felon with a history of fraud.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Mon Ethos is refusing to return equipment it was loaned under the contract, which is due to expire on Sept. 30, including a GrayKey — an item that lets police hack into mobile devices and retrieve encrypted information.
According to the complaint, the property also includes iPads, Facebook portals, iPhones, Max West Nitro tablets, Qlink Wireless tablets, laptops, Motorola cellphones, and Android Moto G phones with cases.
Acting Attorney General Gordon Rhea praised the court’s orders in a statement on Friday morning and promised to start an investigation against Mon Ethos. Despite its founder’s history of fraud, Government House has said previously that having a criminal record does not automatically preclude an individual from obtaining a business license or contracting with the Virgin Islands government.
“At our request, the Court ordered Mon Ethos to return the phones, tablets, and other items given to it by the VIPD for forensic analysis and to refrain from deleting or damaging those items, many of which contain evidence in pending criminal cases. This order was vitally important, as Mon Ethos had implied that the evidence it held might be in peril if we did not accede to its demands,” Rhea said.
“Having secured judicial assistance in preserving the integrity of evidence held by Mon Ethos, we intend to continue to vigorously pursue our investigation of that company’s dealings in the Virgin Islands,” he said.
Friday’s hearing took place in a third-floor courtroom at the Alexander Farrelly Justice Complex on St. Thomas and lasted roughly 40 minutes. Most participants attended by way of live stream videoconference, including attorney Alex Golubitsky, representing Mon Ethos.
Golubitsky denied that his client ever threatened to delete or otherwise damage information obtained over systems contracted for use by VIPD.
“We take the chain of custody very seriously at Mon Ethos,” Golubitsky said. He then appealed to the court to also take seriously the close to half a million dollars-worth of outstanding vendor payments his client claims he has been owed for more than six months.
The judge said the court’s role was not to negotiate the dispute over payment for services; instead, it was to make sure the police department got back information and devices obtained as part of criminal investigations from Mon Ethos.
“This court is particularly concerned that evidence that is needed for a criminal investigation may be lost or deleted, or withheld unnecessarily,” Thomas-Jacobs said.
“The court wants the parties to work together,” to devise the best way to hand over the information and devices in question, she said.
Mon Ethos was directed to present a plan as to how it will deliver the evidence sought without any loss of data, “and the parties will file that by Tuesday of next week,” Thomas-Jacobs said.
Both sides agreed to return to court for a hearing on Aug. 22 at 10 a.m. after the court has time to review the plans submitted.
