A man and woman have been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with the murder of Cornelius Garrison, an alleged conspirator in the Louisiana staged-accident scam who was gunned down days after he was indicted for his participation in what prosecutors have dubbed “Operation Sideswipe.”
Garrison was killed in his New Orleans home on Sept. 22, 2020, four days after he was indicted in the scheme to stage collisions with trucks (and in one case a bus) with the goal of prying insurance payments out of the trucking companies. Some of the victims were small companies, with one or just a handful of trucks. Others were trucking giants, such as C.R. England.
Ryan “Red” Harris, 35, and Jovanna Gardner, 39, were indicted by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The indictments were announced Monday.
Each was indicted on five federal counts: conspiracy to commit witness tampering through murder; witness tampering through murder; conspiracy to retaliate against a witness through murder; retaliation against a witness through murder; and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
That last charge is notable because it is the one that the more than 50 people charged in Operation Sideswipe have been hit with by federal prosecutors. Harris and Gardner do not appear to have been indicted earlier in the case for the actual participation in the staged accidents, and the mail and wire fraud charges along with the murder-related charges appear to be a catch-up by prosecutors.
The 52 indictments have resulted in 48 guilty pleas, according to the U.S Attorney’s office. No cases have gone to trial.
The prepared statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s office regarding the indictments mostly recaps the basic steps taken in staged accidents: put several people in a car, find a truck to collide with often by so-called “spotters” in a separate car; have the person behind the wheel, known as the “slammer,” collide with the identified truck; have the spotters come in and scoop up the slammer, getting them away from the scene; put another person behind the wheel; allege injuries and seek medical payouts.
There is little detail about the Garrison murder, except to say that it was “part of a scheme to prevent Garrison from cooperating with the federal government and exposing the scheme to stage collisions.”
Harris and Gardner appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Wells Roby on Monday. They are in federal custody.
According to a report published by New Orleans television station WDSU, prosecutors at Gardner’s detention hearing Wednesday said she did not pull the trigger but played an unspecified role in Garrison’s murder.
Judge Roby ordered that Gardner continued to held in custody.
According to the WDSU report, other details emerged from the hearing: Garrison was shot 10 times and the police found all 10 shell casings; Gardner and Harris share a child with each other; a federal agent said Garrison started cooperating with investigators in fall 2019, roughly a year before he was killed.
The television station reported that Harris’ hearing is next week.
The various indictments have identified multiple attorneys allegedly involved in the scheme by a letter system: Attorney A, B, etc. And as the U.S. attorney noted in the release about the Harris and Gardner indictments, “the scheme included individuals such as attorneys and others associated with the attorneys who pursued fraudulent claims and fraudulent lawsuits knowing they were based on staged collisions.”
Yet no attorneys have been indicted except for Danny Keating. He pleaded guilty almost four years ago, and his sentencing has been delayed numerous times. The current date set for sentencing is July 18.
According to court documents, the trial date for Harris and Gardner is July 15.
The indictment makes clear that prosecutors have their eyes on other individuals as well. It said Harris and Gardner conspired with “others known and unknown to the Grand Jury,” though the indictment is ambiguous about whether the alleged plotters of the staged collisions also were involved in a plan to kill Garrison to keep him from cooperating.
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