Trial begins in New Orleans staged-crash cases that involve conspiracy, murder

The words of a slain federal witness are expected to loom large in a New Orleans courtroom this week as a trial begins for two local lawyers and two others accused in a wild scheme to stage vehicle wrecks with big rig trucks across the Crescent City.

The trial, slated to start Monday in federal court, is the first in a sprawling insurance fraud case that gripped New Orleans legal circles even before authorities charged a murder plot.

Vanessa Motta, a Hollywood stuntwoman-turned-lawyer, attorney Jason Giles and the King Firm are accused of brazen, yearslong frauds that involved filling cars with people, ramming them into 18-wheelers on New Orleans highways and then suing for big insurance checks.

The feds say some passengers underwent surgeries they didn't need while unscrupulous lawyers took in millions while in some cases paying $1,000 per passenger in kickbacks.

The blockbuster federal probe has spawned guilty pleas from about 50 defendants across more than a half-dozen indictments since 2019.

Crashes and a killing

Prosecutors allege overlapping schemes involving different "slammers," who were paid by the lawyers to gather passengers and then steer into tractor trailers. From Houma to Slidell, dozens were recruited to fill the crash cars and sign up with attorneys to make injury claims against the trucking companies.

According to the feds, Motta and Giles each employed Cornelius Garrison, a slammer who told the FBI he'd taken at least 50 turns behind the wheel in staged crashes. The lanky, 6-feet-6 Garrison had been talking to federal agents for about a year when he was gunned down at age 54 at his mother's doorstep in Gentilly in 2020.

The killing came four days after Garrison's name appeared atop an indictment based largely on what he'd revealed, court records show.

The murder itself is the subject of a trial scheduled for late summer against Sean Alfortish, a disbarred attorney and former Kenner magistrate who shares a young child with Motta; and Leon "Chunky" Parker, who is also accused of staging wrecks, and who prosecutors claim carried out the alleged hit on Garrison.

Another defendant, Ryan Harris, has pleaded guilty to the murder plot while claiming Alfortish arranged it with Parker and paid him for the hit.

Harris admitted he had previously worked with Garrison on staged crashes. He is expected to be a key witness at a trial that's slated to run for three weeks.

Garrison allegedly told federal agents that he staged collisions for Giles, the King Firm, Motta, her law firm, and Alfortish.

According to an FBI memo, Garrison had shown agents $192,000 in checks from Alfortish's company that he said were for dozens of bogus wrecks. Garrison told agents that Alfortish instructed him "if anything ever happened" to say the payments were for construction work.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter has ruled that prosecutors can show those statements to jurors.

Garrison also allegedly "provided information regarding Alfortish's role in the scheme and the attempts by Motta and Alfortish to make him an unavailable witness."

Court records show that Garrison told agents that Alfortish offered him $500,000 if he "took the fall" and also offered to move him to the Bahamas.

A New Orleans 'conspiracy'

For her part, Motta now claims that she was duped by Alfortish, who is not on trial this week and remains in federal custody pending his trial.

In a legal filing, Motta acknowledges "a conspiracy by a group of people from New Orleans East to stage car accidents" but claims she wasn't privy to it.

Motta, who had appeared on attorney billboards under the slogan "Send 'Er In!" claims Alfortish admitted to her only later that he'd been paying "runners" to funnel personal injury cases to her.

Alfortish was a "master manipulator" who denied that he knew any of the wrecks were staged, wrote Motta's attorney, Sean Toomey.

"This was a terrible betrayal that deeply changed their personal relationship. In short, Mr. Alfortish used Ms. Motta, he lied to Ms. Motta, he put her career (and now possibly her freedom) in jeopardy without her knowledge, for his own selfish financial greed," Toomey wrote.

Alfortish, 58, previously served most of a 46-month federal prison sentence handed down in 2012 after pleading guilty to rigging the elections of a Louisiana horsemen's group while serving as its president and raiding its coffers for personal expenses and to reimburse himself for settlement of a sexual harassment grievance.

'Corruption tax'

Prosecutors have described an "about-face" in Motta's defense, "from asserting, for years, that she and Alfortish were victims of circumstance to now claiming that at some point she knew Alfortish was part of a staged collision scheme," Vitter wrote recently.

Harris has claimed that Alfortish and Motta told him Garrison was a rat and a snitch and that "it would be better" if he were dead, court records show.

Garrison's killing "absolutely" slowed down a case that ranks among the largest in Louisiana for its impact, said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a criminal justice watchdog.

"The (auto) premiums are higher because of this corruption. I'm not aware of anything of this magnitude in Louisiana. This is billions of dollars and literally touches every licensed driver that owns a vehicle in this state," Goyeneche said.

"You're talking about a massive financial fraud, but this became even more unbelievable" with the allegations of a murder plot, he said.

Peter Strasser, the former U.S. Attorney in New Orleans whose office launched the case, declined to comment directly on the impact of Garrison's murder on the investigation.

Strasser said a similar staged-crash ring was busted in Connecticut a few years earlier. In New Orleans, lawyers for insurance companies caught on to the local ring, flagging many run-ins with big rigs in the same New Orleans locales by cars filled to the brim with riders.

"The scheme itself is not new, but they went here in New Orleans to new heights," said Strasser, adding that juries in the city were predisposed to side against the truckers and insurance companies. "They expanded it out 100-fold from what they were doing in Connecticut."

Motta faces charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering.

Giles faces the same conspiracy count, along with other charges for mail fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Their names appear together only on the conspiracy charge.

Only one other lawyer has been charged as part of the wide-ranging fraud alleged by prosecutors. Danny Patrick Keating Jr., who was accused of working with a different slammer, Damian Labeaud, pleaded guilty in June 2021 and still awaits his sentence.

The two other defendants standing trial this week are Diaminike Stalbert and Carl Morgan, a member of Harris' family. Each faces a conspiracy count. Stalbert also is accused of lying to an FBI agent.

A fifth defendant, Timara Lawrence, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a wire fraud conspiracy charge. Lawrence admitted that she and Harris, then a romantic partner, conspired to stage a bogus crash and file a fraudulent insurance claim in 2020.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Payne, Brian Klebba and Mary K. Kaufman are trying the case against the four defendants and two law firms.