Staging 31 Big Rig Crashes Sends Man To Prison

Most of us have heard the term "ambulance chasers", a phrase for lawyers eagerly looking for injury cases. Evidently, one personal injury attorney in New Orleans came up with a workaround. Just fake the crashes. Now, his involvement in over two dozen staged tractor-trailer collisions has earned him federal prison time. Oh, and the restitution he's on the hook for is quite a bit more than the cash he collected as part of the scam.

Danny Patrick Keating Jr., 57, was sentenced on October 15, 2026 to 32 months in prison for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, like that Texas fraudster with a huge car collection. According to the Justice Department, he knowingly paid Damian Labeaud for the staged crashes and represented 77 plaintiffs involved in them. Keating's role was turning those deliberate collisions into legal claims against others. It turns out that the government frowns on such behavior.

According to the DOJ's account of Keating's guilty plea, the arrangement had a price list. Labeaud referred staged crashes to him and other attorneys for $1,000 per passenger when tractor-trailers were involved. For accidents without a tractor-trailer, the rate was $500 per passenger. Keating also advanced Labeaud thousands of dollars, then told him how many crashes he owed based on the money already paid. That detail makes the relationship especially obvious. These were future collisions treated like outstanding orders.

According to authorities, in September of 2017, Keating wrote himself a $17,000 check for "advertising," then used the proceeds to get a cashier's check payable to Labeaud. A separate part of the court proceeding explained how the crashes worked. Labeaud admitted to being the "slammer" in two June 2017 collisions where he intentionally drove into 18-wheelers, a situation that would have benefitted from a dashcam. Then, a "spotter" would pick him up to flee the scene while those left behind could pursue claims.

When the crashes became cases, the deception continued. Keating admitted to filing lawsuits in Louisiana state and federal courts with faulty information. He would at times misrepresent who was driving, who was at fault, and what injuries occurred. The DOJ says that across multiple cases, his clients also gave false deposition testimony. At this point in these cases, Keating was manufacturing more than the crash itself. In fact, of the 31 collisions staged to collect insurance payouts, he settled 17 with real payouts.

Keating and his clients received approximately $1.5 million. Of that, he retained around $358,000 as attorney fees. Notably, those figures only cover his portion of a larger investigation. The DOJ says that it's charged some 63 people as a result of its probe into the scheme. Keating pleaded guilty in June 2021, more than five years before his sentencing. Along with the prison term, the judge ordered three years of supervised release and $657,405.34 in restitution. Maybe he should've hired a better lawyer.