Jury convicts disbarred lawyer of fraud in New Orleans staged wrecks case, mistrial on murder counts

A federal jury on Thursday delivered a split verdict in New Orleans' blockbuster staged wrecks case, convicting a disbarred Jefferson Parish attorney of running the yearslong insurance fraud scheme but deadlocking on murder-conspiracy counts he'd faced for the slaying of a key FBI informant.

Jurors deliberated for more than 30 hours over five days before returning the stunning mixed verdict against disbarred lawyer Sean Alfortish and a codefendant, Leon "Chunky" Parker, who had been accused of pulling the trigger that killed Cornelius Garrison III.

Garrison was a "slammer" who earned almost $200,000 by driving passenger vehicles in the staged collisions scheme before agreeing to cooperate with the FBI. He was shot dead inside his mother's home in Gentilly four days after his cooperation was confirmed by a federal indictment in September 2020.

Alfortish was convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of mail fraud for directing the staged wrecks scheme, according to the verdict read in court by Chief U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter. He was also convicted of obstruction and witness tampering for trying to convince Garrison to move to the Bahamas as the federal probe mounted.

Alfortish slumped and held his face in one hand as Vitter read "guilty" from the verdict form on each fraud count.

Vitter declared a mistrial on a handful of murder-conspiracy counts tied to Garrison's killing on which the jury was unable to reach a verdict, including retaliation against a witness through murder and causing death through use of a firearm. The outcome means both Alfortish and Parker, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud for participating in a staged collision but denied a role in Garrison's killing, likely face another trial for the murder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Payne asked Vitter to schedule a hearing to set the new trial date. Vitter remanded Alfortish and Parker to jail pending their retrial and sentencings.

Alfortish's fraud conviction culminates a yearslong effort by federal law enforcement and prosecutors to hold accountable a man they said devised and oversaw the brazen scheme involving passengers, drivers and personal injury lawyers to stage collisions with 18-wheelers on New Orleans highways. The multimillion dollar operation snagged dozens of large settlements through bogus injury claims filed in the city's civil courts. Insurance firms have blamed it for inflating ratepayers' auto premiums.

"Today's verdict is an important step towards justice," U.S. Attorney David Courcelle said at a Thursday press conference. "Alfortish and Parker exploited the courts to benefit themselves and confederates."

But by failing to reach a verdict on whether Alfortish ordered Garrison's killing, which stopped the fraud investigation cold and spawned an additional murder probe, at least some of the jurors rejected prosecutors' argument that Alfortish resorted to killing a federal witness to escape accountability — a key prong of a prosecution that emerged from a four-year search for Garrison's killers.

"The United States of America charged Sean Alfortish with murdering a federal witness," Alfortish's lawyer, Shaun Clarke, told reporters outside the federal courthouse. "They brought every resource of the federal government that they could bring. They brought five assistant U.S. attorneys onto the case. They had a phalanx of FBI agents. They tried in every way possible to convict Sean Alfortish of murdering a federal informant. And the jury did not find in their favor."

If the government wants to retry the charges, Clarke said, "so be it. We'll be ready."

The jury appeared deadlocked for much of its marathon deliberation session, one of the longest in recent memory at New Orleans' federal courthouse. Vitter on Wednesday issued an "Allen charge," or directive to keep deliberating despite a stalemate.

The mistrial on the murder counts suggested some jurors were unconvinced by prosecutors' star witness, Ryan "Red" Harris, a "slammer" who learned the trade from Garrison and who testified that he helped Parker carry out the hit on Alfortish's command.

Garrison's niece, who watched much of the trial, said the verdict provided little closure.

"My uncle was murdered and there was no verdict for it," Davondria Garrison said. "My grandmother, her son was murdered in front of her. We still don't have justice."

Significant fraud evidence

The three-week trial that preceded Thursday's verdict unpacked a fraud conspiracy that prosecutors said had been wildly successful. They used thousands of pages of financial records and called dozens of witnesses to show how Alfortish and his fiancée, an up-and-coming injury attorney named Vanessa Motta, paid "slammers" to recruit passengers, pack them into cars, sideswipe 18-wheelers on busy highways and then bring in the passengers as lawsuit plaintiffs.

Unable to litigate the bogus lawsuits himself after a prior conviction and disbarment, prosecutors detailed how Alfortish cashed in through a web of firms that worked alongside Motta's law firm. They included a lawsuit referral business that funneled cases from "slammers" to the firm for litigation, plus companies that financed plaintiffs' surgeries.

Motta and Alfortish raked in millions as the scheme reached its heyday in the late 2010s, financial records show. (A separate jury convicted her in March on a slew of fraud counts.)

The operation began to unravel in late 2019 as federal scrutiny of Alfortish and Motta mounted, juiced by suspicions from civil defense lawyers on the receiving end of the wave of lawsuits.

Garrison began cooperating that year with FBI agents assigned to "Operation Sideswipe." In 31 meetings spanning 11 months, he told federal agents and prosecutors how he'd made a living sideswiping 18-wheelers for the couple.

In 2020, Alfortish and Motta received a pair of grand jury subpoenas that made clear Garrison had joined "Team USA." Garrison was indicted that September with federal charges that confirmed his cooperation. Four days later, he was shot 10 times in his mother's entryway. The FBI called in violent crime specialists as the bureau's white collar agents plugged away at a case in which their star witness had just been murdered.

"Mr. Garrison was killed for helping us build the case that has led to prison sentences for dozens of individuals who staged auto crashes across New Orleans," said Jonathan Tapp, the FBI's special agent in charge in New Orleans.

Four years would pass before Harris' arrest for Garrison's death. Alfortish and Parker were indicted for the killing the following year after Harris gave them up to authorities.

Scant direct evidence on murder

Garrison's death on Sept. 22, 2020 loomed large over the three-week trial. His final words — "mama, fall down on the floor" — were the first thing jurors heard during prosecutors' opening statements.

Harris faces a 35-year sentence after pleading guilty to planning the murder. On the witness stand, he said he did so on Alfortish's orders and enlisted Parker, an old family friend, to pull the trigger.

Little direct evidence emerged during the trial to back up that account. An FBI presentation of cellphone location data showed Parker and Harris meeting repeatedly the day before the hit. But beyond that, little more than Harris' word tied Alfortish and Parker to the killing.

Harris testified that he met the two men at Harris' family auto shop to discuss the hit on Sept. 21.

He acknowledged buying a pair of burner phones used to plan the hit, casing Garrison's house and goading a girlfriend, Jovanna Gardner, into enticing Garrison to come outside before he was shot. Harris also confessed to later burning a getaway car.

But it was Parker, he testified, who pulled the trigger that killed Garrison.

FBI-gathered location data showed Parker and Harris meeting repeatedly in the 24 hours before the killing in a Planet Fitness parking lot in New Orleans East. Parker and Harris were both there when Harris said he called Gardner to instruct her on the plan to lure Garrison outside.

Parker's attorneys, Stephen Haedicke and Richard Schroeder, sought to discredit Harris during the trial, calling him the murder's true triggerman. They highlighted dozens of Harris' family members who appeared across Motta's roster of plaintiffs as a potential incentive he had to seek Garrison's silence.

Haedicke and Schroeder emphasized Harris' lies to investigators during FBI "proffer" sessions, and seized on a conflicting story he told on the witness stand about who destroyed one of two burner phones used in the murder.

They showed the jury several 9 mm handguns, boxes of ammunition and an empty Glock case recovered from Harris' auto shop and apartment at the time of his 2024 arrest for the murder. (A murder weapon in Garrison's killing was never found.)

"Leon Parker has maintained his innocence of the murder from day one, and we are thankful the jury refused to convict him," Haedicke said in a statement to The Times-Picayune after the verdict. "If the government chooses to retry him, we look forward to securing a not guilty verdict at the retrial."

Gardner took the witness stand on the final day of trial and testified that Harris had told her he killed Garrison in the hours after the murder. She said he threatened to kill her, too, if she told anyone about it. Under cross-examination by Payne, Gardner added that she'd seen Parker and Harris together at her Chalmette apartment complex hours before the killing.

Gardner's testimony was the final piece of evidence presented to jurors before they began deliberations.

Asked after the verdict whether the prosecution team would reevaluate Harris' role as a witness when it retries the murder counts, Courcelle declined to comment.

The jury on Thursday acquitted Alfortish on additional charges of obstruction and suborning perjury — counts he'd faced over a jailhouse saga while he awaited trial in which he was accused of trying to pay another prisoner to lie in his defense.

Alfortish's mother, Sylvia, and his brothers Todd and Jeff watched much of the trial from the courtroom. When Vitter read "no verdict" on the first of the murder counts he'd faced, one of them gasped.