A New Orleans personal injury attorney who admitted paying to have tractor-trailers deliberately crashed into — 31 separate times — has been sentenced to 32 months in federal prison, in one of the largest staged-accident fraud cases ever prosecuted in the United States.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Louisiana
Danny Patrick Keating Jr., 57, of New Orleans, was sentenced on October 15, 2026, for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana announced. U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle announced the sentence, which was imposed by U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown.
What the court ordered
In addition to the 32 months in prison, Keating must serve three years of supervised release after he gets out, pay $657,405.34 in restitution, and pay a $100 mandatory special assessment fee, according to the Justice Department and trucking-industry reporting of the sentencing. Keating, who was a personal injury attorney licensed to practice law in Louisiana, has resigned from practicing law, the ABA Journal reported.
How the scheme worked, according to prosecutors
Keating was indicted on November 5, 2020, and charged with knowingly taking part in a vast conspiracy involving the intentional staging of motor vehicle collisions with tractor-trailers and commercial vehicles in the metropolitan New Orleans area, prosecutors said. When he pleaded guilty on June 17, 2021, Keating admitted he knowingly paid Damian Labeaud for 31 illegally staged tractor-trailer accidents, and that he represented 77 plaintiffs involved in those 31 accidents.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Louisiana
In the staged-crash method described by federal investigators, a driver known as a “slammer” intentionally drives a car full of passengers into a commercial truck. A “spotter” then picks the slammer up and leaves the scene, while the passengers stay behind to present themselves as innocent victims and pursue injury claims. Keating admitted filing lawsuits in state and federal court in Louisiana on behalf of the clients in the staged accidents — lawsuits that, prosecutors said, fraudulently misrepresented the identity of the driver of the vehicles, fraudulently misrepresented who was at fault, and fraudulently claimed injuries.
Prosecutors said Keating also used the U.S. Postal Service to mail settlement demands on behalf of his clients, and that in many cases his clients provided false testimony in depositions taken in connection with the lawsuits he filed. One payment described in reporting of the government's account: in September 2017 Keating wrote a $17,000 check to himself for advertising expenses and used the funds to obtain a cashier's check payable to Labeaud.
The money
Keating settled 17 of the 31 staged accidents. The indictment charged that Keating and his clients received a total of approximately $1.5 million in settlement money from his representation of those clients, and that Keating kept approximately $358,000 of that money as his attorney's fees, the Justice Department said. The restitution he must now pay — $657,405.34 — is larger than the fees he kept.
Operation Sideswipe: the wider investigation
Keating's case is one piece of a much larger federal probe known as Operation Sideswipe. So far, 63 defendants have been charged in the federal investigation into the staging of collisions with tractor-trailers around New Orleans, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Louisiana
FreightWaves reported that Keating pleaded guilty in June 2021, was the only attorney in the case to plead guilty at that stage, and cooperated with prosecutors for years before his sentencing was finally held. He was a key witness in the successful prosecution of fellow attorneys Vanessa Motta and Jason Giles, who were convicted in March for their roles in the scam and are still awaiting sentencing, FreightWaves reported. Keating's own defence asked the court for probation, citing his cooperation and poor health, according to reporting of the hearing by NOLA.com cited by FreightWaves — the judge imposed prison time instead.
Why this matters for truck drivers
For professional drivers — including the many Punjabi truckers who run freight through the U.S. Gulf South — staged-crash fraud is not an abstract courtroom story. A driver whose truck is deliberately hit can be blamed for a collision that was arranged before he ever reached the scene, face fraudulent injury claims backed by false testimony, and see his record, his carrier's insurance costs and his livelihood put at risk. Federal prosecutors built Operation Sideswipe precisely because the collisions were being manufactured to extract settlements from trucking companies and their insurers, who were treated as deep-pocket targets because commercial trucks carry large insurance policies.
Sentencing is still pending for other convicted figures in Operation Sideswipe, including attorneys Vanessa Motta and Jason Giles, and prosecutors say 63 defendants have been charged in the probe so far — meaning further guilty pleas, trials and sentences are expected. Keating begins serving a 32-month term, followed by three years of supervised release, and owes $657,405.34 in restitution.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana (announcement of October 16, 2026); Overdrive; CCJ Digital; ABA Journal; Land Line Media; FreightWaves — all reporting the same sentencing and the admissions Keating made in his 2021 guilty plea.