7 more sentenced in Louisiana truck collision insurance scam this month

Seven defendants have been sentenced this month in the Louisiana staged accident scam, but none of the sentences exceeded 18 months and several defendants received probation.

The scam collisions all followed a similar pattern: A truck (or in one case a bus) was identified by “spotters” and a group led by a “slammer” staged a collision. Various levels of litigation followed, with the passengers in the car claiming medical ailments arising from the collisions. In some cases, unnecessary surgeries followed. Payouts by insurers and truck companies ranged from a few thousand dollars to more than $1 million in a case involving C.R. England. 

The sentences handed down this month, all for mail fraud, are:

• John Diggs, 62, and James Williams, 68, 10 month in prison, whose staged accident in May 2017 resulted in insurance payouts of $275,500. They also face three years of supervised release and a restitution hearing in April.
• Dashontae Young, 28. Damian Lebeaud, who was one of the ringleaders in the collision scam and who has yet to be sentenced after pleading guilty in August 2020, recruited Young to be a passenger in a collision in June 2017. Young received a sentence of five years probation and was ordered to pay restitution of $43,000. Three other individuals who were involved in that collision received payouts of just $7,500. Young’s three fellow passengers received the same sentence last month.  Lebeaud is to be sentenced in May. 
• David Brown, 51, Gilda Henderson, 70, and Latrell Johnson, 30, each got three years’ probation and were ordered to pay restitution of $200,963.59.
• Stacie Wheaten, 51, got 18 months in prison. Her longer sentence could be tied to the fact that she recruited Brown, Henderson and Johnson to serve as passengers for a collision on May 11, 2017. The collision in that case resulted in payouts of more than $140,000. She will also face two years of supervised release and was ordered to pay restitution of $54,000.

While the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana has not published the total number of individuals sentenced in the scheme, a review by FreightWaves of public statements on those sentencings appears to show 26 people have received punishment ranging from probation to four years in jail.