More people who staged a fake wreck in 2015 with a tractor-trailer in a scheme to fleece a fleet for millions of dollars were ordered to repay $5.5 million in restitution, according to U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans.
Keishira Richardson, 27, Chandrika Brown, 31, and Aisha Thompson, 44, are the three most recent of 36 people convicted in federal court for their involvement in a plot called “Operation Sideswipe,” according to Evans.
According to documents filed in federal court, the women intentionally collided with a tractor-trailer in the area of Alvar Street and France Road in New Orleans. Roderick Hickman, who pleaded guilty to a previous indictment charging him and 10 others with staging automobile accidents, was driving Keishira Robinson’s vehicle at the time of this accident.
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According to the U.S. attorney, Hickman intentionally struck a tractor-trailer owned and operated by Utah-based C.R. England and then was picked up from the location of the collision by Damian Labeaud, who has also pleaded guilty to a previous indictment in another part of this federal investigation. C.R England ranks No. 34 on the 2022 FleetOwner 500: For-Hire list.
After the accident, Richardson’s father, Anthony Robinson, who was in Labeaud’s vehicle at the time of the accident, got behind the wheel of his own vehicle to make it appear that he had been driving at the time of the staged accident, according to court documents.
Robinson falsely reported to the New Orleans police that he had been driving and the tractor-trailer had struck his vehicle.
According to Evans, the four defendants were referred to an attorney who paid Labeaud to stage this accident. All of the defendants were treated by doctors and health care providers at the direction of their attorneys, Evans said. Robinson, Harris, and Schaffer underwent several surgeries after the accident, leading to rising medical costs. In July 2019, C.R. England and its insurance company paid out about $4.7 million for the fraudulent claims associated with this staged accident.
Richardson was sentenced to five years’ probation. Robinson and his wife, Audrey Harris, were each sentenced in June to four years in prison on the same charge. They both underwent extensive medical treatment and neck and back surgeries because they “understood that agreeing to more medical treatment would increase the value of their lawsuit,” according to Evans.
The latest three were sentenced on April 20 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and were ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution for the staged accident on Oct. 13, 2015.
U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, who also sentenced Robinson, told her father and Harris that they would be responsible for paying $5 million, including the trucking company's attorneys fees.
U.S. District Judge Sarah S. Vance sentenced Thompson to 18 months in prison and restitution of $677,500—the total paid in claims to several people involved in a crash with a tour bus on Oct. 15, 2015.
Vance ordered Brown to put in 100 hours of community service and pay $121,000 in restitution. Although Brown wasn't in a RAV4 that hit a tractor-trailer on Sept. 6, 2017, she hired a lawyer, put in a claim for injuries, and received medical treatment, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
