Editorial: “Slammers” also slammed Louisiana auto insurance ratepayers

Vast criminal conspiracies are, despite the public fascination with them, rare. When one is real, it's unusual to get a true, detailed and vivid picture of the players and how they operate.

But that's what happened over the last several weeks in New Orleans during the blockbuster trial of two attorneys who were at the center of a sprawling scheme to defraud trucking and insurance companies by conducting staged wrecks and then suing the big-rig firms for damages.

What's more, this conspiracy operated alongside an ongoing debate about Louisiana's sky-high automobile insurance rates. In 2025, a package of insurance reform bills passed the Legislature aiming to reduce what supporters argued was state juries' affinity for awarding large jury verdicts to those injured in these wrecks. Trial lawyers balked, but after this trial, it's hard to argue that something was very amiss in a system where some saw profit in faking crashes for insurance payouts.

The way the scheme worked is this: "Slammers" would pack a car with passengers and then head out on the interstate, where they would crash into a truck. They would then tell the police it was the trucker's fault.

One slammer would then direct the people in the car to attorneys like Vanessa Motta and Jason Giles, who sued on their behalf, often netting big settlements.

One of those slammers, Cornelius Garrison III, was shot dead at his mother's house in 2020 after he began cooperating with federal investigators. Another slammer, Ryan "Red" Harris, pleaded guilty to helping arrange the killing. A disbarred attorney, Sean Alfortish, is also charged in the killing but has not yet gone to trial.

The trial, which ended last week with guilty verdicts for Motta and Giles, was full of the sort of bombshell testimony and wild twists that are more at home in a network procedural than they are in the staid federal courtroom.

But apart from the lurid narratives, the case does shine a light on Louisianans' dealings with automotive insurers.

Jurors were asked during jury selection about their histories with their auto insurers, prompting at least one of them to call insurance a "money grab."

Another complained that his insurance company had increased his premium after an accident, even though the other driver was at fault.

Prosecutors in the trial said the scheme went on for so long and involved so many wrecks — before Motta's and Giles' trial, almost 50 people had pleaded guilty in the case — that it could have affected insurance premiums across the state. One slammer even apologized from the stand for his contribution to the state's high rates.

We are glad, of course, to see these fraudsters caught and brought to trial. And we certainly hope that eliminating this vast criminal conspiracy will also affect rates, even if just a little bit.