Brett “Mac” McClafferty, the St. Thomas businessman free on bail as he faces bank fraud charges, was granted permission by a Superior Court judge to travel to the mainland after filing an emergency motion earlier this week seeking to assist a family member recovering from surgery.
While the details of that motion and four exhibits filed on the docket in support of it are not available for public view, when contacted Monday night, McClafferty told the Source he is needed stateside to help his cousin recover from surgery.
“The motion is clear. My cousin and best friend is having anywhere from eighteen inches to six feet of his intestines removed, and someone is gonna have to wipe his ass after his mother returns to Arizona for her own medical appointments,” McClafferty said via text. “No further comment, thanks for reaching out.”
Judge Denise M. Francois granted the motion in an order issued April 27, allowing McClafferty to travel from St. Thomas to San Francisco from May 4 through May 10 under specific conditions, including providing his itinerary to probation and maintaining contact while off-island. The order notes that the purpose of pretrial release conditions is to ensure a defendant’s appearance in court — not to serve as punishment — and found the requested travel consistent with those standards.
The emergency travel motion comes two weeks after McClafferty filed an emergency motion to have his driver’s license returned so that he may “complete routine and necessary personal and business transactions that require a valid identification,” which the judge did grant. McClafferty noted in that motion that the license is not a “Real ID” and cannot be used for travel or federal identification. He also filed an extradition waiver along with Monday’s motion for emergency travel, meaning he would not fight efforts to return him to the Virgin Islands to stand trial in his bank fraud case, currently scheduled for Nov. 3.
McClafferty, 38, 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 Police say funds were withdrawn and wired to third parties before the instruments were returned unpaid.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, a co-owner of St. Thomas Social, a restaurant in Yacht Haven Grande, is 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. He has denied wrongdoing, is free on $150,000 bail, and has filed a lawsuit against Banco Popular, accusing it of negligence, defamation, abuse of process, false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
McClafferty also faces numerous civil lawsuits as the owner of Mac Private Equity — investors in that endeavor claim it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme — and has filed for Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in the District of Delaware. A confirmation hearing in the Chapter 13 case, April 10, was continued after objections by the Delaware Division of Revenue and Chapter 7 Trustee George Miller, who reported to the court that, as far as he can tell, “None of the records obtained to date demonstrate anything other than Mr. McClafferty using corporate funds for personal expenses.”
William F. Jaworski Jr., the Chapter 13 trustee, said in his motion to dismiss or convert the case to Chapter 7 that under the “‘totality of the circumstances’ test, the Debtor’s conduct, characterized by the failure to list all assets, concealment of income, the maintenance of a lavish lifestyle, and the funding of personal political ambitions while in bankruptcy falls far short of the ‘honest debtor’ standard. Such conduct warrants immediate dismissal.”
Additionally, 17 of his alleged victims — investors in Mac Private Equity who say their money vanished, including two who were awarded judgments in Virgin Islands court — have joined the call to have the Chapter 13 case converted to Chapter 7.
A subsequent hearing in the bankruptcy cases is scheduled for May 18.
Meanwhile, McClafferty has also launched a campaign for Virgin Islands Senate, though in recent days has said he might run for Delegate to Congress instead after Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes said she is seeking Attorney General Gordon Rhea’s opinion on whether McClafferty is ineligible to run for a seat in the Legislature because of his lengthy criminal past in Ohio where he served time in prison on fraud charges before moving to the Virgin Islands in late 2020 or January 2021 with the intent, he told a reporter at the time, “to open a family office, buy a catamaran, and sail. That’s it. No plans beyond that.”
In a letter to Fawkes regarding McClafferty’s qualifications for office, his attorney, Bradley Lehman of Delaware, wrote that while some of the Ohio charges against McClafferty resulted in felony convictions, he brought three appeals in which the judgments of the trial courts were reversed and remanded. “The State of Ohio and Mr. McClafferty subsequently entered into a ‘global resolution’ that resulted in Mr. McClafferty pleading guilty to several misdemeanor violations of the [Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act] in lieu of being tried or retried on the felony counts of the indictments,” Lehman wrote.
Because misdemeanors are not felony convictions, Lehman reasoned, an individual does not forfeit his civil rights, and furthermore, “Mr. McClafferty submits that convictions arising from violations of the OCSPA do not rise to the level of ‘crimes of moral turpitude,’ as they are criminal and civil penalties relating to the operation of a consumer-related business in the State of Ohio,” thus making him eligible to run for office under the Revised Organic Act of 1954 that is the Virgin Islands’ de facto constitution.
Rhea had not issued an opinion on McClafferty’s eligibility as of Tuesday.
