NEW ORLEANS — The sprawling five-year federal investigation that exposed more than 100 intentional accidents with 18-wheel trucks, “Operation Sideswipe,” was supposed to curtail the fraud. But even though 52 people were indicted, 44 of them pleading guilty, only a single attorney has been charged so far.
The other 51 defendants are passengers who packed into cars hoping to cheat their way to a big payday, as well as a handful of street-level organizers of the scheme known as “slammers.”
Most of the defendants have been cooperating with the feds as part of their plea agreements. Despite that cooperation, prosecutors’ efforts to implicate attorneys who filed lawsuits now exposed as fraud have run into major roadblocks.
First, a key slammer-turned-federal witness, Cornelius Garrison, was fatally shot in September 2020 when his indictment was made public.
And many of the attorneys under scrutiny for filing false claims hired their own criminal defense lawyers. And those lawyers didn't wait for indictments. They went on the offensive.
No 'slam' dunk...
Among the pieces of evidence shared with federal prosecutors was a tape recording in which one confessed slammer, Damian Labeaud, is talking to the accident attorneys he referred cases to.
“I can guarantee you on my life that I ain't ever was going to do no fraud,” Labeaud says in the recording. “Put me under. No sir, it ain't no fraud. Nothing that I ever done.”
For many who have closely followed the case, the failure to find enough evidence to indict all but one attorney has been disappointing.
“What happens to the people that were clearly orchestrating these crimes that the low-level poor, mostly minority people have already pled guilty to perpetrating?” asked attorney Megan Kiefer, who has worked on both the plaintiff’s and defense side of accident litigation. “They (the attorneys) need to be held more accountable than somebody who was a passenger in a car.”
“Fifty-two defendants. And yet they still can't get even one level above them, let alone the higher the higher people in the conspiracy?” asked longtime criminal defense attorney Craig Mordock. “It's very head scratching.”
Savings never materialized...
The prevalence of accident fraud in Louisiana is estimated to add at least $600 a year in car insurance costs for every Louisiana driver. While some were hopeful that “Operation Sideswipe” would help lower those costs, suspect lawsuits still litter the courts and those savings have not been realized.
“It's unacceptable. It's unaffordable,” said Louisiana Insurance Commissioner-elect Tim Temple. “I don't want Louisiana to be the state that's identified as, oh, let's go practice fraud in that state,”
Personal injury attorney Edwin Shorty Jr. knows the federal case well. In 2017 he filed an accident lawsuit for three people who claimed they were hit by truck on I-10. This August, just before the statute of limitations ran out, those three people were indicted for allegedly staging the accident.
In his opinion, making a criminal case against attorneys who file bad accident lawsuits is much more difficult than going after the low-level scammers.
“I don't know if there are a whole lot of smoking guns for them (federal authorities) to climb up the ladder,” Edwin Shorty Jr. said.
Long before anyone heard about “Operation Sideswipe,” the trucking company that Shorty took to court vigorously contested the lawsuit in court. At first, he plowed ahead.
“If the insurance company denies the claim or has a problem with the claim, does that really give me a concern? No, because the insurance companies are in the business of denying claims,” he said.
Pleading the Fifth...
But when the federal investigation exploded into public view, Shorty got off of the case.
“I started to see enough where it became problematic,” he said.
In fact, the case was barreling toward trial when Shorty's clients decided to plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination and drop the lawsuit.
But not all attorneys bailed on cases that the feds flagged as suspicious.
One accident attorney, Hollywood stuntwoman-turned-attorney Vanessa Motta was among them. Of eight accident lawsuits that federal authorities were able to freeze because of the criminal probe, Motta had five of them. No other attorney had more than one.
“If you have a client that comes in and lies to you, that's not your fault. But it is your fault if you don't get out,” Kiefer said.
Foot off the gas...
Motta is listed as “Attorney B” in federal court documents. Her fiancé, Sean Alfortish, a disbarred attorney who served time in federal prison in an unrelated fraud case, is listed as “Co-conspirator A.,” language that is usually a clear signal by prosecutors of criminal implications.
Neither has been charged.
“There's no evidence she's done anything wrong,” said Motta’s attorney Dane Ciolino. Ciolino noted that Motta offered to submit to an FBI interview, but the agency declined.
As the feds took their foot off the gas, some of Motta's accident lawsuits crashed and burned when they were allowed to go forward in court. Some were dropped after years of expensive litigation.
One case, involving brothers Keyon and Joshua Youngblood, went all the way to a four-day trial before a jury was shown that Joshua was actually on the West Bank when his brother was involved in an accident with a truck near the French Quarter.
“Fourteen people – 12 jurors and two alternates – had to sit for a week outside of their jobs, not in their child care, not making money, you know, having to rearrange their whole life to sit through a trial that that attorney should have known was fraud,” Kiefer said.
Fight continues...
Shorty says it’s not so easy to tell if a claim is bogus. Even if there are red flags, he said a plaintiff's attorney has an obligation to a client.
“It's not like you can ask the U.S. Attorney's Office, hey, tell me, tell me so I can make an informed decision,” Shorty said. “You're getting bits and pieces, and you still want to have faith in what your client is saying.”
If “Operation Sideswipe” is wrapping up, Temple says he will try to fight the fraud with new cases, or in other ways.
“I think we've got to continue the efforts to combat fraud. And maybe it sounds like we need to double down,” Temple said.