Federal agents who searched The Springs Resort and Spa have returned the Pagosa Springs property to its owners without citing or arresting them.
Drug Enforcement Administration and Internal Revenue Service investigators executed a search warrant at the 79-room resort owned by sisters Nerissa and Keeley Whittington on Thursday and also searched Big Byte Data Center, an Albuquerque data center they own as part of their Gulfstream Group property management and real estate firm.
The resort was named in the DEA’s 2013 drug trafficking and money laundering investigation of the women’s father, Bill Whittington, and his brother, Don Whittington.
However, federal agents on Monday declined to say whether the searches of the resort and data center were related to the DEA investigation of the former race-car-driving Whittington brothers that began last fall.
“We really do not know what the government thinks it is doing here, and we’ve asked,” the sisters’ attorney, James Brosnahan, said. “These companies are owned by two women business owners who are very distinguished in both of their communities and have received many awards. The arrival of these agents is a mystery to us.”
Brosnahan said the sisters are cooperating with federal investigators. The resort remains open.
“There is no indication that these two women who own these companies are under investigation,” he said. “We appear to be a third party having some documents they are interested in.”
DEA agent Glenn Gaasche said the search warrants served in Pagosa Springs came from the IRS. Bryan Thiel, a special agent with the IRS Criminal Investigation division, declined to comment on the case.
Last fall, DEA agents in Miami alleged that Bill and Don Whittington sold or leased jets to drug traffickers in Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and Africa.
A confidential source told the DEA that proceeds from those jet sales were laundered through The Springs Resort and Spa, according to an Oct. 25, 2013, affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Junction seeking search warrants to raid the e-mail accounts used by Bill Whittington and his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based World Jet Inc.
The 35-page search warrant affidavit for a Chicago Internet service provider, obtained by the Durango Herald and posted on the newspaper’s website, alleges that Bill Whittington in 2008 proposed a 10-year, $250 million development plan for The Springs Resort, expanding the number of geothermal pools and adding rooms.
The resort unveiled a LEED-certified renovation and expansion in 2009.
The Whittington brothers were professional race car drivers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979.
In 1987, Bill pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and conspiracy to smuggle marijuana to the U.S. from Colombia and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. A year later, Don pleaded guilty to tax violations connected with drug smuggling.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins