NEW ORLEANS — A man accused of killing a federal witness in the massive case that exposed millions of dollars in fraudulent insurance payouts from staged truck accidents was ordered held without bail after a dramatic court hearing Friday.
Federal Magistrate Judge Michael North ordered detention for Ryan Harris after an FBI agent testified about evidence that linked the defendant and his girlfriend, Jovanna Gardner, to the 2020 murder of Cornelius Garrison.
Harris, 35, and Gardner, 39, were indicted on May 3 on charges of witness tampering through murder in the fatal shooting of Garrison, an accused fellow scammer who was gunned down in a barrage of gunfire when he stepped out of his Gentilly apartment.
Harris and Gardner, who have a four-year child together, also were indicted for mail and wire fraud for their alleged participation in some of the dozens of staged wrecks and bogus lawsuits.
The detention hearing Friday resembled a mini-trial, with FBI agent Chauncy Bradley revealing text messages, tracking of “burner” cell phones, surveillance video from a Dollar General store, and, finally, the fatal ruse that lured Garrison to answer his door on Sept. 22, 2020.
Garrison was shot 10 times, the agent testified, with the trail of bullet casings tracking from his porch into his front living room. As the shooting began, Garrison’s last words were directed to his mother, who was in another room, “Get down.”
The agent said a pair of low-cost disposable “burner” phones linked Harris and Gardner to the murder. Gardner, posing as a woman named “Kim,” allegedly enticed Garrison to meet her on the night he was gunned down through a series of text messages, Bradley testified.
“I’m gonna come around 8:30,” she texted, according to the agent.
But Gardner was in New Orleans East at that moment, while Harris’ phone pinged to the block where Garrison lived on Foy Street at the exact same time. A 9-1-1 call was received just after 8:30 reporting that Garrison had been shot, Bradley said.
Bradley presented photos from a Dollar General store showing Harris with Gardner on the same day her phone was purchased at the store.
Harris’s attorney, Christopher Murell, argued that the circumstantial evidence was outweighed by his client’s standing in the community as a father, provider, business owner, and lifelong local resident with no criminal history. A large group of Harris’ family and friends packed the courtroom Friday in a show of support, a couple of them sobbing as North ordered Harris held without bail.
Murell described the government’s evidence as unconvincing and that he was preparing to mount a vigorous defense.
“At best, there's very circumstantial, specious evidence about cell phone tracking,” Murell said. “We disagree with the judge's conclusion that it was strong.”
Garrison had secretly been cooperating with the FBI in the months before he was killed, Bradley said. His execution-style murder was a major setback as authorities tried to climb the ladder from small-time scammers and street-level organizers to the attorneys and doctors who they say raked in millions of dollars through bogus lawsuits and even unnecessary surgeries.
So far the case has led to 52 people being indicted, with 48 of them pleading guilty. Despite the massive scope of the case, only a single attorney, Danny Patrick Keating, has entered a guilty plea in exchange for his cooperation.
That has sparked some criticism of the slow pace and lackluster results of the five-year probe, but multiple delays in Keating’s long-awaiting sentencing led to speculation of bigger bombshells to come in the form of indictments against attorneys or doctors.
The indictment of Harris and Gardner, who could face the rarely used federal death penalty in Garrison’s murder, is the most significant development in the case in several years.
Both defendants were clients of Hollywood stuntwoman-turned-attorney Vanessa Motta, a central figure in the staged accident probe after five truck accident lawsuits she filed on behalf of clients were frozen because of the long-running federal investigation.
Bradley testified that a contract for Motta’s legal services was found at Harris’s auto repair shop, Harris R. Motors on Cleary Avenue in Metairie.
Motta is listed as “Attorney B” in federal court documents. Her fiancé, Sean Alfortish, a disbarred attorney who served time in federal prison in an unrelated fraud case, is listed as “Co-conspirator A.,” language that is usually a clear signal by prosecutors of criminal implications.
Neither has been charged.
The prevalence of accident fraud in Louisiana is estimated to add at least $600 a year in car insurance costs for every Louisiana driver. While some were hopeful that the case, dubbed “Operation Sideswipe,” would help lower those costs, suspicious lawsuits still litter the courts and those savings have not been realized.
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