THE RISE OF STAGED ACCIDENTS
A new criminal enterprise on our nation’s highways threatens the safety of motorists, driving auto insurance rates up for everyone.
Professional conmen and corrupt trial lawyers are conspiring to stage auto accidents with 18-wheelers in order to file bogus medical insurance claims and frivolous lawsuits.
As brazen as this shakedown is, there are currently no federal laws specifically criminalizing staged accidents, leaving law enforcement and prosecutors with fewer tools to stop and deter this reckless and dangerous conduct.
Fortunately, a new bill introduced in Congress would help protect motorists, truckers, and law enforcement from the impact of staged accidents on America’s highways.
A TRIAL LAWYER & A CONMAN WALK INTO A BURGER KING
It reads like a sleazy, made-for-TV crime drama. One might mistake it for an episode of Better Call Saul:
Inside a New Orleans Burger King, a personal injury lawyer and a scam artist rendezvous to plot their next move. On the back of a greasy napkin, the two masterminds sketch out a get-rich-quick scheme, involving orchestrated highway accidents and unwitting 18-wheelers, phantom injuries and large-sum lawsuits.
The conman, Damian LaBeaud, would recruit a network of co-conspirators to play the role of “victim.” Acting as wheelman, he’d deliberately crash their cars into the back or side of a tractor-trailer—and then quickly exit the vehicle to allow its actual owner to get behind the wheel. LaBeaud would stay on the scene, however, to provide false witness and file a police report that puts the unsuspecting truck driver at fault.
For his part, attorney Danny Patrick Keating Jr. would front each “victim” $7,500 to participate in the scheme. He'd enlist the services of a compliant doctor to perform neck or shoulder surgery on his clients after a “crash.” They’d get more money out of a lawsuit if they had surgery done, the lawyer explained. The payoff would come later in civil court: By suing each trucking company for as much as $1,000,000 in damages, they could maximize their profits in any out-of-court settlements.
As ludicrous as it all sounds, this was the making of a serious and complex criminal conspiracy, resulting in multiple staged accidents, spelled out in a ten-page federal indictment following an extensive FBI investigation. To date, 33 individuals have been indicted in the scheme.
What’s empowering such brazen plots? How come their orchestrators feel assured in the high likelihood of a handsome payout, even when their concocted stories have no basis in truth or material fact? The fact is these criminal opportunists are merely one symptom of a much larger problem, and these questions are what lead us to the true story:
A civil litigation system that has spun wildly out of control—with costly consequences that are impacting far more than just truckers.
Congress Takes Action
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Highway Accident Fairness Act of 2021 would:
- • Assure fair and prompt recoveries for highway accident victims with legitimate claims;
- • Provide for federal court jurisdiction over interstate cases of national importance;
- • Maintain stability in the movement of interstate commerce and protect the public from the safety hazard of staged collisions;
- • Provide transparency when litigation finance companies invest in highway accident lawsuits as a profit-making opportunity;
- • Protect motor carriers and insurers from the financial burdens of defending against, settling or being found liable for fraudulent claims that result from staged collisions; and
- • Protect law enforcement agencies from expending resources dealing with the aftermath of staged collisions.
Tell your member of Congress you support the Highway Accident Fairness Act of 2021.
