A man and woman have been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with the murder of Cornelius Garrison, a conspirator in the Louisiana staged accident scam who was gunned down in his home days after he was indicted for his participation in what prosecutors have dubbed “Operation Sideswipe.”
Garrison was killed in his New Orleans home on September 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 in their operations. Others were trucking giants, such as C.R. England.
Ryan Harris, 35, known as “Red,” and Jovanna Gardner, 39, were indicted by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The indictments were announced Monday.
Each were 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 what the more than 52 people charged in Operation Sideswipe were 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 far more serious 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 Monday. They were remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshal’s office.
The various indictments have identified multiple attorneys involved in the scheme by a letter system: Attorney A, B, etc. But as the U.S. Attorney noted in the release about 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. In discussing the conspiracy, it said Harris and Gardner conspired with “others known and unknown to the Grand Jury,” though the indictment is ambiguous about whether the plotters of the staged collisions also were involved in a plan to kill Garrison to keep him from cooperating.
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