Overseas Trips Land Washburn in Doghouse

U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes blamed himself for failing to have Dana Washburn’s passport confiscated or to specifically limit her travel after she pleaded guilty back in May 2009 to defrauding IberiaBank Corp. of almost $3.6 million.

But it wasn’t just the fact that the 42-year-old Rogers woman had made three trips to Mexico this year that made Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Whatley livid at a recent sentencing hearing.

And it wasn’t just that Washburn had failed to inform her probation officer of the trips, or even that Washburn argued (unsuccessfully) that her urinary incontinence was such a hardship that she shouldn’t have to actually serve time in a federal prison.

What seemed to send Whatley over the edge was the timing of the trips.

According to testimony at the hearing, Washburn spent spring break with her husband, her college-age daughter and two of her daughter’s friends at the Excellence Playa Mujeres resort at Cancun from March 19-26.

She was available for that trip because the sentencing hearing that had been scheduled (after three previous delays) for March 18 had again been postponed because of her medical problems. And it was only because her medical records showed that she complained of diarrhea after her return that the prosecution learned, months later, that she had left the country.