Personal injury attorneys Jason Giles and Vanessa Motta were found guilty Friday on all counts and ordered jailed ahead of sentencing over a brazen fraud scheme involving hundreds of pre-planned collisions with 18-wheelers and scores of lawsuits they filed pursuing bogus injury claims.
Giles and Motta were each convicted on eight charges, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, multiple counts of mail fraud and witness tampering. Each of their law firms were found guilty as well.
A jury returned the verdict Friday afternoon in a packed federal courtroom in New Orleans after deliberating for more than five hours. As Chief U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter read the verdict, Motta sobbed silently, then hugged her teenage daughter at the front of the courtroom gallery.
Vitter sparred with defense attorneys for Giles and Motta about whether they should be remanded to jail ahead of sentencing in July.
Motta’s attorney, Sean Toomey, argued that she’s a mother to two daughters, and that defendants are usually released ahead of sentencing in typical fraud cases. Giles’ attorney, Lynda Van Davis, said he’d complied with conditions of his bond.
But Vitter found that both presented concerns after being convicted of witness tampering. Vitter also said Motta previously violated a condition of her release when she contacted a potential witness. The judge also noted that her fiance Sean Alfortish awaits trial for killing a witness, slammer Cornelius Garrison III, who had cooperated with the FBI before his execution-style slaying in 2020.
As Vitter left the courtroom for several minutes to render her decision on detaining the two lawyers, Motta’s mother passed out in the front row, dropping to the carpet, as Motta wept nearby.
Court staff eventually propped her back up. As they did, Motta began to gag, leaning over her chair and heaving into a trash pail for several minutes as a woman held back her hair.
Smiling Michael M. Simpson, first assistant U.S. attorney, speaks with the media.
Then Vitter returned and ordered both lawyers to jail pending sentencing dates in July.
“To be clear, this is anything but a typical fraud case,” Vitter said. “The jury has found a wide-ranging conspiracy involving professionals that are supposed to be looked up to, attorneys, who are part of this conspiracy.”
Motta’s sentencing is scheduled for July 7, and Giles’ is scheduled for July 14. Each faces a maximum 20-year federal prison term.
The jury convicted a third defendant, Diaminike Stalbert, on a charge of making false statements to FBI agents, but acquitted her on the main conspiracy count. Stalbert, described as a single mother of six, was accused of riding in and recruiting for one bogus crash. Vitter released her pending a July 31 sentencing. Stalbert faces a maximum five-year sentence.
Jury agreed Motta, Giles worked with ‘slammers’
The guilty verdict came after more than two weeks of testimony in a case that has gripped New Orleans’ legal community. It was the first case to go to trial from a sprawling investigation dubbed “Operation Sideswipe” that has led to about 50 guilty verdicts to date.
Federal prosecutors said Giles and Motta each worked hand-in-hand with “slammers,” who they paid to fill cars with passengers and steer them into tractor trailers on highways in New Orleans. Civil juries in those cases tended to return higher settlements, according to testimony from insurance defense lawyers and others.
Prosecutors painted a sordid picture of a group of lawyers — Motta, Giles and other attorneys who were not charged and were not called to testify — conniving with street-level “slammers” to create a constant flow of lucrative injury claims they manufactured themselves.
“Vanessa Motta and Jason Giles abused their positions and violated their oaths as attorneys,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Simpson said after the verdict. U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle, who previously represented Giles as a defense attorney, recused himself from the case.
The question of whether those slammers knowingly staged hundreds of sideswipes and other wrecks in cars full of passengers as they crashed into tractor trailers on New Orleans roadways was not disputed by either side during the trial.
Motta and Giles acknowledged the scheme, but their attorneys denied they knew it was going on around them. Their attorneys presented no witnesses in defense of Motta and Giles after more than 11 days of government testimony.
From the witness stand, slammer Damian Labeaud spelled out a scheme working with Giles and other lawyers at The King Firm, in which they paid him $1,000 for each adult passenger in a staged collision with a big rig. Labeaud told the jury he delivered hundreds of bogus crash victims to Giles and another lawyer, Danny Patrick Keating Jr. Labeaud also implicated others at The King Firm.
“Let’s just face it: what the stagers and slammers did was horrible,” said Giles’ attorney, Lynda Van Davis-Greenstone, after Friday’s verdicts. “The difference is I do not believe my client knew.”
Vanessa Motta
She said media coverage of the sprawling federal investigation predisposed jurors against the lawyer defendants. She also questioned immunity deals she said were afforded at least two other lawyers who worked at The King Firm. Those lawyers never took the stand.
“I did find it interesting that lawyers who received immunity were not called as witnesses in this case,” she said. “I found it very interesting that those who were convicted, entered guilty pleas of having staged the accidents did not come in and testify.”
Simpson declined to comment on other lawyers who were implicated by witnesses over the course of the three-week trial as he praised the prosecution team.
Lynda Van Davis-Greenstone and Jason Giles.
Trial included testimony from other lawyers, slammers
Keating, the only other lawyer charged in the case, has already pleaded guilty, and he testified at the trial, spelling out his knowledge of Labeaud’s work and the code words involving food and fish that the slammer would use while offering crashes for sale.
Another slammer, Ryan Harris, testified about his involvement in a similar setup with Motta, a former Hollywood stuntwoman, and her fiance, disbarred attorney Alfortish, a former Kenner magistrate who served federal prison time over a scheme to defraud a Louisiana horsemen’s group as its president.
Alfortish and another man allegedly involved in staging wrecks, Leon “Chunky” Parker, are slated to stand trial in August for allegedly killing another prolific slammer, Cornelius Garrison III, in September 2020.
Garrison had been cooperating with the FBI for about a year up to then, and he’d implicated Motta, Alfortish, Giles and others in the scheme, wearing a wire for the government at one point.
His killing at the doorstep of his mother’s home in Gentilly cast a pall over the federal investigation, and the pace of indictments slowed.
