Former sheriff facing lawsuit
State police commander accuses Bateman of false report while doing PI work
Against the backdrop of a tense ownership dispute between shareholders of an e-commerce business, a Maryland State Police commander is suing former Anne Arundel Sheriff Ron Bateman alleging he made a false report about the officer while doing private investigation work for the firm.
Forestville Barrack Commander George White is suing Bateman, former three-term Republican sheriff, for telling state police investigators that White stole time from Annapolis-based Compass Marketing, where he worked secondary employment until May 2019, also claiming the trooper stole computers and locked down the company’s network after quitting.
Bateman, who lost to Jim Fredericks in the 2018 Republican primary, declined to comment. In a July 29 deposition, Bateman said he was hired as a “special adviser to the CEO” of Compass Marketing in May 2019, days after George White resigned from the e-commerce company.
According to the deposition, Bateman was hired to “take care of security issues” at Compass and “investigate a variety of things,” after John White, the company’s co-founder and George White’s uncle, discovered a $2 million life insurance policy with his signature forged. The investigation led to a lawsuit filed by Compass Marketing in February alleging several shareholders and employees, including George White, conspired to harm the company. The case is awaiting an Anne Arundel Circuit judge’s ruling on whether or not to dismiss the claim.
Part of Bateman’s investigation hinged on a variety of network issues the company suffered after George White resigned in May 2019 from the company’s IT department. Bateman told state police that “all the company’s computers were ‘locked down,’ and
the email account was shut down” after George White resigned, and he “suspected [George] White may have purposefully sabotaged the company’s network and computer system to cause the issues upon his resignation.”
A criminal and administrative investigation into George White conducted by Maryland State Police was closed after investigators presented their findings to the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office, which determined there was a lack of evidence to prove any of the allegations, according to copies of the reports obtained by The Capital through a public information request.
George White has maintained that the allegations were false, and that Bateman knew they were false when he called former state police Superintendent William Pallozzi in June 2019. That call initiated the criminal and administrative investigations, which Bateman described in his deposition as “lame at best.”
An employee at Compass told state police investigators the issues began when an IT company started performing work two days before George White resigned, according to the report.
George White’s father, Michael White, told investigators he was locked out of the computer’s network in early May 2019, according to the report. He said John White had canceled his company credit card, to which several of the network services were billed.
State police later found that George White had logged into his company Microsoft and Google accounts after he had resigned, but it was unclear what he had done on the account.
Michael White, John White’s brother, is expected to win another term as an orphans court judge in St. Mary’s County. He and his brother, Daniel, have been engaged in a lengthy civil dispute with John over the company’s ownership.
Michael and Daniel, a deputy state’s attorney in St. Mary’s County, have sought to dissolve Compass through a Virginia court, alleging fraudulent behavior from their brother. Meanwhile, John White has sought damages from his brothers in a federal case claiming they conspired to steal from Compass and help other former employees form a competing company.
Judith Cornwell, an attorney for Michael and George White in that case, declined to comment. Bruce Marcus, an attorney for Daniel White, did not return a request to comment.
In the federal case, Compass has hired a nine-lawyer legal team, including former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and several members of the multinational law firm Morgan Lewis and Bockius. In the complaint, they described Daniel and Michael’s efforts in Virginia as a “sham legal campaign.”
After state police concluded its probe of George White, the trooper attempted to press false statement charges against Bateman. The State’s Attorney’s Office deemed the evidence to be too inconclusive to support the charge.
“There certainly was some evidence suggesting that Trp. White was working at Compass Marketing while he was also working in his capacity as a State Trooper, and that, given his role at Compass Marketing, he could have locked down the company network which caused major disruption at the business,” then-Assistant State’s Attorney Colleen McGuinn wrote in November 2020.
White claims in the lawsuit that a year after Bateman made the report, he was reassigned from working as commander of the agency’s legislative security section to the Forestville Barrack, a “less favorable” position.
Elena Russo, a state police spokesperson, said “there is nothing to suggest [White] was transferred due to the 2019 investigation,” noting it was closed as unfounded.
White said in a deposition that the allegations had changed his relationship with “everyone” in his life, especially after press in Southern Maryland began publishing the allegations.
“After the allegations were published in the press, [White’s] life has been completely different,” George White’s attorney, Brendan Callahan, wrote in a court filing. “Everyone in [White’s] life behaves more awkwardly than they did prior to Bateman’s false allegations.”
Callahan, who did not return a request to comment, described White’s involuntary reassignment to the Forestville barrack as “professional humiliation.”
The defamation case is scheduled for a three-day trial before Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Elizabeth Morris in February 2023. A list of the witnesses White intends to call includes Pallozzi and Senate President Bill Ferguson.