Unaccounted For
The Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board accepted an attorney’s license revocation.
News & Advance reported
The license of a Lynchburg-area attorney and former prosecutor, who is accused of financial misconduct involving past clients, has been revoked.
Cherie Anne Washburn signed a document on March 12 acknowledging those misconduct claims are true. As a result, she consented to the Virginia State Bar revoking her license, which happened Tuesday.
According to that Virginia State Bar document, Washburn “misappropriated substantial amounts of money” from an elderly person for whom she held power of attorney. A worker for Adult Protective Services alerted the Virginia State Bar to that activity in a complaint it filed in August.
The complaint also held Washburn didn’t explain some of her expenses, didn’t answer questions about her expenses and didn’t provide documentation supporting her expenses.
Civil cases pending in Lynchburg Circuit Court tie Washburn to two different Lynchburg residents as power of attorney for them — one who is 94 years old and the other who died in late January.
In one case, an attorney said Washburn was removed as power of attorney for the woman and later “compelled” the woman to put Washburn back in that position. Now representing the woman’s estate, the attorney said around $350,000 of her assets “remain unaccounted for.”
Washburn’s bio is still on the website for the firm Wetzel & Washburn, but Rebecca Wetzel said Wednesday Washburn was not a member of the firm when her license was relinquished.
The bio states she graduated from the Liberty University School of Law in 2010 and then practiced civil law in a Roanoke-based firm before becoming a prosecutor in Appomattox County, then Campbell County. She left the Campbell County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney in June 2015.
Attorney P. Scott De Bruin, who is representing Washburn in the civil matters, said Wednesday he could not comment on pending cases.
(Mike Frisch)