The one attorney involved in the Louisiana staged truck accident scheme who was indicted and subsequently pleaded guilty still does not know his fate.
Danny Keating was to be sentenced Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, but it has been postponed.
Sentencing has also been put on hold for Damian Labeaud, the on-the-ground ringleader who choreographed the collisions between cars full of individuals and (mostly) trucks.
Keating’s sentencing is now set for July 18, but there is no guarantee of that; his sentencing dates have changed multiple times.
Mid-July will mark more than three years since he pleaded guilty to being one of the legal masterminds of what the U.S. attorney’s office has dubbed Operation Sideswipe. That office has secured 48 guilty pleas; no cases have yet gone to trial.
The penalties assessed have ranged from probation to home detention to more than four years in prison.
The pace of guilty pleas has slowed but not stopped. In 2024, four individuals have pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud. All of the 48 defendants who have entered guilty pleas have been charged with some form of wire fraud or mail fraud.
There have been no new indictments since August. Four of the five individuals indicted in August last year were in the group of defendants who pleaded guilty in 2024.
Labeaud’s sentencing is now set for Sept. 19. LIke Keating, Labeaud has seen his sentencing delayed several times in the past year for unspecified reasons.
Keating’s indictment and guilty plea have been notable primarily because he was the sole attorney who has been indicted in Operation Sideswipe. But various indictments and other legal documents identify attorneys A through E, with no names attached, as being involved in the plot to stage car-truck collisions and collect payouts from trucking companies or insurers.
A local lawyer shares his observations on the case
Comments from anybody involved in the case have been close to nonexistent, and emails sent by FreightWaves to various attorneys have garnered no response.
However, in a posting in February on the web page of New Orleans law firm Mouledoux Bland Legrand Brackett, attorney J. Edward McAuliffe III weighed in.
He said that another Labeaud sentencing delay — which now has occurred — “would signal that Feds are not yet finished with Labeaud.”
In reference to the multiple attorneys identified by letters rather than names, McAuliffe wrote that “we know there are more players involved.”
“A big sign that the investigation has moved forward substantially would be the naming of other attorneys, in conjunction with indictments or not,” he wrote. “At that point, perhaps even more professional players might get tangled up in Operation Sideswipe.”
And McAuliffe had optimistic words for the trucking industry that was targeted by Operation Sideswipe, even if it seems the case is dragging on. “However, with some progress made, the commercial trucking industry should be thankful that federal agents and prosecutors in Louisiana are taking this years’ long accident staging investigation so seriously,” he wrote.
How it played out
Legal documents that have emerged over the years describe unnecessary medical procedures, including surgeries, that possibly complicit doctors performed on the individuals who were in the cars that intentionally struck a moving truck or, in one case, a bus. There have been no indictments of medical personnel so far.
The staged collision spelled out in the original 2019 indictment of Labeaud and others contains a basic outline that was copied in the other collisions.
Labeaud drove a car that was not his with three or four other individuals as passengers, one of whom owned the vehicle. They would cruise around various parts of New Orleans, looking for a truck to strike, “and Labeaud intentionally collided with the tractor-trailer,” according to the indictment.
Labeaud would then get out of the car, flee on foot and the owner of the vehicle would get behind the wheel.
Participants in the scam gave false statements to police, and the process would begin to seek payment from trucking or insurance companies, with an attorney involved from the beginning handling that part of the scam.
One of the indicted co-conspirators, Cornelius Garrison, was shot to death in his home in 2020 soon after he was indicted. He was reported to be cooperating with the federal investigation. No arrests have been made in that shooting.
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