Brent R. Wilkes

Brent Roger Wilkes (born May 21, 1954), is an American entrepreneur, defense contractor, civic leader.

Wilkes grew up in a San Diego suburb, Chula Vista, and graduated from San Diego State University in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and having completed his course work for an MBA with a concentration in Taxation.

He then became a CPA while working for Arthur Andersen & Co., an international public accounting firm, in San Diego.

He subsequently joined Deloitte Haskins & Sells in their Washington D.C. practice office before leaving public accounting to become the president of a D.C. based real estate development company.

Later, he became consultant for a Southern California software company that was seeking federal contracts for converting paper documents to digital ones.

He was George W. Bush's finance co-chairman in California, and also involved in Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor.

But it was as a federal contractor that he became involved with the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal.

Wilkes was then living in Poway, California.

As The Washington Post put it, "Wilkes was an obscure California contractor and lobbyist until his name surfaced last year as one of two defense contractors alleged to have given Cunningham $2.4 million in cash and other benefits in return for Cunningham's steering government business their way. One of Wilkes's companies received more than $80 million in Pentagon contracts over the past decade that stemmed from earmarks that Cunningham slipped into spending bills."

According to the same anonymous source Wilkes hired Shirlington Limousine & Transportation Service of Virginia beginning in 1990 for entertainment at the Watergate Hotel.

In 1995 Wilkes started ADCS Inc., or "Automated Document Conversion Systems."

With the help of many congressmen including Cunningham, he began winning contracts from the Pentagon.

Wilkes got a $1 million Pentagon contract in 1997, which Cunningham proclaimed "an asset" to San Diego.

In 1999, ADCS, Inc. was awarded a $9.7 million contract to convert documents related to the Panama Canal Zone.

Subsequently, the company began collecting more than $20 million a year in defense business."

In 2000, a report by the Pentagon's inspector general said of the company's biggest project, a $9.7 million contract to convert documents in Panama, that the program was created under pressure from two congressmen.

Pentagon procurement officials identified the two as Cunningham and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to whom Wilkes had also donated heavily.

The two senior Pentagon officials who initiated the investigation, Lou Kratz and Gary Jones, later confirmed that the project was initiated at the request of Pentagon project manager Anne Barnes and was a requirement of the Panama treaty accords.

Neither Wilkes, his companies nor any congressman played a role in initiating this project which was an obligation of the U.S. under the treaty.

After the release of the Pentagon report which criticized ADCS, Wilkes and a business associate, Max Gelwix, established the defense technology contractor PerfectWave Technologies LLC, in Poway, which was trying to use sound isolation technology to delete background noise from radio communications, and to improve the capability of ground penetrating radar with signal processing techniques.

The company completed and delivered a signal processing algorithm in a chip set to eliminate background noise in the helmets of the crews of the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) and the Abrams main battle tank.

In addition substantial progress had been made on an application which allowed ground penetrating radar to locate and identify improvised explosive devices (IED).

PerfectWave was connected to a lobbying scandal with republican congressmen Tom DeLay (R-Texas), John Doolittle (R-Calif.) and Devin Nunes.

In June 2004, PerfectWave paid for the legislative directors for Doolittle and Nunes to travel to San Diego to visit the company.

Subpoenas later showed that there was a $15000 donation made to Texans for a Republican Majority, and $40,000 to a gala tribute to Duke Cunningham.

AP reported that "Wilkes has been subpoenaed in the money-laundering case against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Prosecutors want to hear from Wilkes about a contribution to a DeLay fundraising committee at the center of the investigation that led to indictments that pushed the GOP leader from office".

Additionally, as noted above, Wilkes' company, Group W Advisers, hired the Alexander Strategy Group that employed DeLay's wife to lobby for acoustic technology for the Navy.

Doolittle acknowledges steering money to PerfectWave but denies doing anything wrong.

In a statement last month, he said his backing for PerfectWave was "based solely on the project's merits and the written support of the military.' But the only evidence Doolittle's office could provide to show military support for the project was a letter of praise from Robert Lusardi, a program manager for light armored vehicles at the Marine Corps dated February 25 – two and a half years after PerfectWave got its first earmark. By the time Lusardi wrote his letter, the company had received at least $37 million in earmarks."

The Wall Street Journal, citing an anonymous source reported that Wilkes rented hospitality suites at the Watergate Hotel and at the Westin Grand Hotel for Cunningham and other legislators and their guests.

In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security granted Shirlington a $21 million contract.

According to these same reports in The Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union-Tribune, prostitutes regularly accompanied guests at the suites.

Allegedly, admitted Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade told prosecutors that Wilkes had set up a prostitution ring through Shirlington and would procure prostitutes for Cunningham on demand.

Despite intensive investigations by federal agents involving interviews with hotel employees, escort services, prostitutes and all known participants in these poker games no evidence or testimony has been found to corroborate these anonymous allegations.

Wilkes became well known for his involvement with the Duke Cunningham defense contracting scandal and was indicted for his involvement in this scandal on February 13, 2007.

He was indicted on new charges which superseded the previous ones on May 10, 2007.

Wilkes was convicted on all 13 counts on November 5, 2007.

On March 27, 2008, the Court of Appeals ordered him released on bail pending appeal, finding in part "that the appeal raises a 'substantial question' of law or fact likely to result in reversal, a new trial or a sentence not including a term of prison".

On January 6, 2009, after serving eleven months in federal custody, the last six months at Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, Wilkes was released, pending appeal.

Wilkes lost his appeals and was released in September 2022.