The problem turned out to be some sort of problem with a particular email downloaded to the device in the past ... maybe. Found that the device had almost 45 days of emails on it when it was configured for 7 days. Given that it would download the headers but not the remainder and given that it reported last successfully "sync"ing 30 days ago, we deleted all emails on the device that were older than 7 days. Now the device works as expected.
So apparently a prior email on the device was the trigger to the error.