Staged Accidents Lead to Murder Charges in New Orleans Auto Fraud Crackdown

Four years later, the “Operation Sideswipe” crackdown on auto insurance fraud in the “Big Easy” has led to 49 convictions/guilty pleas. Another 14 are awaiting trial. Those include members of Garrison’s ring. The campaign is still ongoing.

Those caught up in the crackdown include two personal injury law firms and their attorneys, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported in a press release. Two people were indicted on federal charges related to Garrison’s murder, the office reported in another press release. One of those pled guilty to reduced charges. She has promised to testify against the other suspect, who is reportedly the father of her child.

More about that case later. Now, we look at the overall problem of auto insurance and fraud in the boot-shaped state and this country.

Accident Fraud: a Multi-Billion Dollar ‘Business’

Most people recognize staging an accident or falsely claiming an injury as fraud. This is universally condemned by those affected by increased premiums due to fraud.

Most don’t know the most expensive insurance fraud is committed by those who may never be in an accident. It’s called “premium fraud.” It includes those who do not list a household driver or understate their annual mileage, ValuePenguin states in an article about insurance fraud. The site answers insurance questions and helps users compare rates.

The age of drivers and driving record are factors used to set an insurance premium. The number of miles a vehicle is on the road is another.

These “fraudsters” may never face a federal indictment. They may not know they did anything wrong until the insurance company discovers the “inaccuracies” and denies their claim.

“Fraudulent bodily injury claims cost car insurance companies between $6.8 and $9.3 billion per year,” ValuePenguin said. “These claims tend to involve neck or back pain, which doesn’t generally involve a trip to the hospital, and they are hard to dispute.”

About 21 percent of auto accident injury claims involve “inflating the severity of an otherwise legitimate claim,” the article said. The insurance companies call this “buildup.”

“Forgetting” to put a driver in the household on the insurance policy costs insurance companies $10.3 billion a year in lost premiums. Underestimating the number of miles driven is another $5.4 billion hit. Neglecting to tell the company about past tickets and accidents is a $3.4 billion “oversight.”

Giving a false address in a lower-cost location – such as saying you live in Natchez, Miss., when you live across the Mississippi River in Vidalia, La. – costs companies $2.9 billion.

Louisiana’s Auto Insurance Crisis

The Bayou State has one of the highest premiums in the country, often holding the top spot in annual reports. In “good” years, it is still in the top three.

In an October report, the Insurance Research Council dubbed Louisiana the “least affordable state” for personal auto insurance in an October report. It cited a “combination of economic conditions, claims behavior and the state’s litigation environment” as major factors.

Using 2022 figures, the IRC said the average annual cost of auto insurance in Louisiana was $1,588 per vehicle. That is 40 percent higher than the national average of $1,127 and second only to Florida that year.

“Auto insurance costs accounted for 2.67 percent of the median household income in the state,” the IRC reported. “Strong income growth in recent years has resulted in moderate improvement in this affordability measure since its peak in 2017, but Louisiana has maintained its decades-long streak as the least affordable jurisdiction for auto insurance.”

The IRC noted Louisiana’s median household income was 22 percent below the national average. The 2.7 percent budget bite from auto insurance compares to a national average of 1.5 percent. Liability costs were 1.3 percent – double the national average. Property damage insurance for collisions was 1 percent. Non-collision repairs were 0.4 percent of that 2.7 percent figure.

IRC President Dale Porfilio said Louisianians have “a higher tendency to file injury claims when an accident occurs, a high underinsured motorist’s rate, and a high rate of claim litigation. These underlying cost drivers need to be addressed to improve affordability.”

Evidence of the state’s love affair with personal injury lawsuits includes “attorney advertising data, surveys of business attitudes, and claims research,” Porfilio said.

Litigious Louisiana

Highway billboards promise the attorney will “fight the big insurance companies” to settle injury suits. TV ads feature smiling “clients” enjoying life and talking about the huge settlements of their claims.

A running joke in the Pelican State is that the first phone call after an accident isn’t to the police or the ambulance company. It’s to one of those billboard lawyers.

Until this past July, an injured motorist had only one year to file a lawsuit for their personal injury. The state raised the statute of limitation to two years. hoping it would bring Louisiana’s litigation rate closer to the national average.

Insurance companies usually won’t settle a claim until the end of treatment. Adjustors need time to review records and evaluate the claim for settlement. This takes several months or longer. Many injured parties almost immediately filed a lawsuit to protect their settlement rights.

A related problem addressed by a recent change lowered the damages threshold for a jury trial. Until 2021, a judge heard and decided any claim seeking less than $50,000 in damages. The revised law lowered that bar to $10,000 to request a jury trial. The requesting party must post a $5,000 bond within 60 days after filing the request. Any claim seeking more than $50,000 goes before a jury.

In a 2017 report, the Louisiana Department of Insurance noted the $50,000 threshold was more than triple Maryland’s $15,000 threshold. The state’s threshold was 10 times that of the $5,000 bar in Hawaii and Rhode Island, in third and fourth place.

A jury trial is a two-edged sword. On one hand, Louisiana elects judges. Claimants vote; insurance companies don’t. The counterargument is that judges know the law, and 12 men and women picked at random from the voter rolls don’t.

Juries may side with the injured party against the “big, bad insurance company” and throw open the vault doors. Jurors may also realize the number of claims and the amount paid out affect their auto insurance premiums.

Legislators and the state Department of Insurance said “tort reform” would decrease premiums. Personal injury attorneys say the cost of litigation and insurance premiums are higher since the changes.

In its January 2024 report on auto accidents, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found Louisiana’s frequency of injuries was 2.13 percent. The nationwide rate is 0.74 percent.

There were over 143,000 auto accidents involving 267,000 vehicles in Louisiana in 2023, the LSU Center for Analytics & Research in Transportation reported. There were 811 fatalities in 755 accidents and 21,364 injuries – 3,623 serious and 17,741 minor.

Not counting fatalities, the number of reported injuries is 8 percent of the total number of vehicles involved in accidents that year.

Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple told Red River Radio in November that Louisianians are “twice as likely to file a bodily injury claim” than Americans overall. He said they are “almost 2.5 times more likely to litigate. We gotta look at that. That’s what’s driving cost.”

Uninsured and Underinsured Drivers Raise Rates

The combination of low household income and high insurance costs increases the number of uninsured and underinsured drivers. The Insurance Information Institute listed Louisiana 23rd in the states and D.C. with an uninsured rate of 13.7 percent. It said the state’s minimum policy coverage of $15,000 for single injuries, $30,000 per accident for all injuries and $25,000 for property damage (15/30/25) is among the lowest in the country.

A person’s likelihood of having an accident is not related to their insurance status. However, insurance companies pay for policyholders’ damages that would otherwise be paid by the at-fault driver’s insurer.

These figures show that many car owners in Louisiana pay more for less protection due to high premiums and low limits.

‘No Pay, No Play’

This rate of uninsured drivers occurs despite Louisiana’s “no pay, no play” law. This law limits an uninsured driver’s ability to recover damages from the other party’s liability insurance.

The rationale behind the law is that a driver who chooses not to pay for auto liability insurance should not recover from someone else’s liability policy, even if the other party is at fault.

That law states the uninsured driver cannot recover anything less than the first $15,000 of bodily injury and the first $25,000 of property damage on the other policy. This does not apply to passengers who do not own the vehicle or if the uninsured vehicle was legally parked when struck.

It also does not apply if the other driver is convicted or pleads guilty/no contest to driving while impaired (DWI), intentionally rams the uninsured vehicle, flees the scene of the accident or was driving while committing a felony.

Consider this example: Driver A is uninsured. He is driving legally through the intersection. Driver B is uninsured. He runs the light, and T-bones Driver A. Driver A is injured, and his car is totaled. Driver A’s injury claim must be over $15,000, and their property damage exceed $25,000 before he gets the first cent of the settlement.

‘Comp Neg’ Plays a Part

In all states, a person must prove injuries due to the negligence of the other driver, US Claims explains in its September 2024 report. In many accidents, one driver is solely at fault and pays the full amount for all damages.

Many other accidents involve shared responsibility. This is called “comparative negligence” (“comp neg”) in insurance parlance.

In some states, a person must be less than 50 percent liable for the accident before they can collect damages from the other driver (e.g., Colorado). Some states allow damage recovery if they are 50 percent or less at fault (e.g., Florida). A few bar recovery if the driver has any share of responsibility (e.g., Alabama). Others, like Louisiana, are “pure comparative” states.

In a “pure comp” state, someone who is 80 percent responsible for an accident can recover 20 percent of their damages. Those in the minority-fault vehicle can recover only 80 percent from the majority–fault driver.

A majority-liable driver of a new, expensive car who claims injuries can receive a bigger insurance payout than the minority-fault driver of an older vehicle who claims no injuries.

A few real-world examples of “comparative negligence” (based on the writer’s experience as an insurance adjustor):

• (1) Stopped at a red light and rear-ended. The rear-ending driver is 100 percent liable.
• (2) Two cars backing out of parking spaces at the grocery store at the same time and colliding rear bumpers. This is usually a 50-50 case, especially with no impartial witnesses to say who started first and whether one vehicle was stopped or took evasive action (e.g., blowing their horn) before impact.
• (3) Vehicle 1 speeds up to “make” the yellow light and Vehicle 2 mistimes the light change and jumps into the intersection while his light is still red. An argument can be made that Vehicle 1 should have slowed down to stop rather than speed up to beat the red light. Vehicle 2 would be mostly at fault.

‘Spotters’ and ‘Slammers’ Preyed on 18-Wheelers

For several years, commercial truckers ran a gauntlet between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. They hoped to avoid becoming a victim in a “cat and mouse” game between the truckers and the scammers. It was “vehicular roulette,” and they hoped their number didn’t come up.

The latest scheme included drivers who struck the trucks (“slammers”) who fled in a getaway vehicle (“spotter”). Passengers would say they were driving and claim injuries, the DOJ said in the Garrison case press release. This prevented the “slammers” from showing up as injured drivers on multiple police reports and insurance claims.

Sometimes, the “spotter” would claim to be an eyewitness, saying they saw the truck hit the other car, the U.S. Attorney explained in its Dec. 9 press release.

The 10 indictments in December include Ryan J. “Red” Harris, Leon M. “Chunky” Parker, Diaminike F. Stalbert, Carl Morgan and Tamara N. Lawrence for direct involvement. Other conspirators include the deceased Cornelius Garrison, former attorney Danny Patrick Keating, Damian Labeaud and Roderick Hickman. Their cases have been resolved.

The sealed indictment was handed down on Dec. 6 and unsealed on Dec. 9 after the arrest of the last defendant, the DOJ said. The indictment includes 22 staged collisions by the ring.

Garrison was a reputed leader of the ring, along with Harris, and began their activity in December 2011. They caused “multiple staged collisions in order to file fraudulent insurance claims and fraudulent lawsuits based on the staged collisions,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in its press release. “The scheme involved the use of the mail and the use of interstate wires, including through the filing of fraudulent insurance claims and fraudulent lawsuits.”

Attorneys’ Involvement in the Scam

Prosecutors claim attorneys Sean D. Alfortish, Vanessa Motta and Jason F. Giles – and their law firms of Motta Law and the King Firm – “pursued fraudulent claims and fraudulent lawsuits knowing they were based on staged collisions,” the December press release states. They are also accused of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

Alfortish, Motta and Motta Law allegedly conspired to have individuals make false statements. They also allegedly offered to pay Garrison and move him out of the country if he did not cooperate with the federal investigation.

Prosecutors accuse Giles and the King Firm of secretly recording Labeaud and Hickman to obstruct justice. Giles allegedly suggested Labeaud leave town during the investigation. Passengers in the staged collisions were persuaded to sign documents to cover up the scheme, the press release claims.

Keating pled guilty in June 2017 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported at the time. Although convicted and disbarred, Keating’s sentencing has been delayed.

His case provides more insight into the scale of the scheme and the part attorneys played.

Keating paid Labeaud $1,000 per “injured” passenger in staged accidents with tractor-trailer rigs, the U.S. Attorney said. They paid $500 per passenger in accidents not involving 18-wheelers.

Keating admitted paying Labeaud for 31 staged accidents with big rigs. He represented 77 plaintiffs in those accidents. He settled 17 of the 31 cases for a total of $1.5 million, taking $358,000 as his attorney fees, the U.S. Attorney said.

Murder of a Federal Informant

Ryan Harris was also charged with “witness tampering through murder,” “retaliation against a witness through murder,” and “causing death through use of a firearm” in connection with Garrison’s death.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Garrison began cooperating with the government investigation in October 2019. He was indicted on Sept. 18, 2020, for conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

The May 2024 indictment alleges Harris and his romantic partner, Jovanna Gardner, murdered Garrison on Sept. 22, 2020, “as part of a scheme to prevent Garrison from cooperating with the federal government and exposing the scheme to stage collisions.”

WDSU-TV’s report on Gardner’s May hearing quoted prosecutors as saying she did not “pull the trigger” but still participated in the “hit” on Garrison. Investigators recovered 10 bullet casings at the scene.

WDSU said the FBI obtained a video of Harris buying a burner cellphone the day before Garrison was shot. Calls and texts were sent to Garrison at the house he shared with his mother. The last call came two minutes before Garrison’s mother called 911 to report that her son had been shot.

That was the last time the burner phone was used. The call reportedly lured Garrison out of the house, where his assailant was waiting.

Gardner pled guilty to one count of “conspiracy to commit witness tampering without violence” as part of a plea deal, a Sept. 3 court order notes. The judge denied her request for home confinement while she awaits sentencing. The order states she “failed to present clear and convincing evidence that there is no likelihood that she would flee.”

She agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case but remains in custody pending her sentencing on the conspiracy charge. In a Nov. 13 motion, prosecutors asked for a sentencing delay. The judge set the sentencing hearing for Feb. 18.

Gardner’s plea deal states the maximum penalty for the crime is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, plus the possibility of restitution to the victims of her crime. In exchange for the guilty plea, the government requested – but stated it could not promise – that all other charges be dropped. The combined maximum sentence for those crimes is life in prison.

The agreement includes provisions contained in an unreleased document that comprise “the defendant’s entire agreement with the government.”

Not the Only Ones

While the specter of murder makes this case worthy of a TV crime drama, this gang is not the only troupe of bad actors in the “City That Care Forgot.”

The latest win for “Operation Sideswipe” prosecutors came on Oct. 30. Antoine Clark pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. That brought the total number of convictions to 49, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 31 press release.

Clark and his co-conspirators “made false police reports, filed a fraudulent lawsuit, lied during deposition testimony and sought unnecessary medical treatment to further their fraudulent claims,” prosecutors said.

Clark’s sentencing is set for Jan. 29, 2025. He faces up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Others indicted with Clark in August 2023 included Shirley Harris and Adonte and Tiffany Turner, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported. The indictment also included two counts of wire fraud.

Harris pled guilty in February to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with an April 2017 accident, according to a U.S. Attorney report. Harris agreed to pay $10,000 in restitution to the insurance company.

Frazier and the Turners pled guilty in January 2024 to one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a November 2017 accident, the U.S. Attorney announced in a press release.

This ring accounts for numbers 45-49 for Operation Sideswipe.

A Huge Problem in Need of a Solution

Americans drive over 3.2 trillion miles every year, the Zebra online insurance shopping site wrote in a February 2024 article. That’s over 14,000 per driver.

In its June 2024 report, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety said over 42,500 Americans died on the nation’s highways, streets and roads in 2022. For comparison, 47,500 U.S. soldiers were killed in combat during the 10-year Vietnam War, according to the National Archives.

Adjusters have a saying: “If stupidity were a coverage exclusion, we’d never pay a claim.” People take dumb chances at intersections. They may forget that “green means go” doesn’t apply when they are turning left across the path of an oncoming vehicle.

Auto insurance protects you from others’ carelessness and protects others from yours. Abusing that protection by illegal means is not a “victimless” crime. All drivers are victims of insurance fraud, even if they never have an accident. It is your premium dollars going into the scammers’ pockets.

If you know or suspect someone is “fudging” their claim, call your local law enforcement department or the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) hotline at (800) 835-6422.

Insurance fraud is a huge problem, but the only problem that cannot be fixed is the one that is ignored.

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