Not So Fast

Having spent so much time in federal court during the past couple of years, your Whispers staff has started to notice judges are routinely requiring white-collar criminals to surrender passports.

Lu Hardin and Kevin Lewis had to forfeit theirs. So did Jeff Rand, the former resident of North Little Rock and Hot Springs who in June pleaded guilty in federal court in Fort Smith to a multimillion-dollar oil-and-gas scam.

Maybe that’s been added to the checklist since U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes blamed himself for not taking Dana Washburn’s passport or specifically restricting her travel.

Washburn took several vacations to Mexico even as she used a claim of severe urinary incontinence to delay sentencing and reporting to prison (which she finally did earlier this month).

And some of us remember that allowing former Little Rock tax attorney Keith Moser to keep his passport forced the FBI to retrieve him from Madagascar.