Danny Patrick Keating Jr., a 57-year-old personal injury attorney in New Orleans, was sentenced on Oct. 15 to 32 months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. He was also ordered to pay $657,405.34 in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release after he leaves prison. The case rests on crashes that were staged on purpose, with drivers ramming 18-wheelers so that injury lawsuits could follow.
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Keating pleaded guilty in June 2021, and the sentence arrived more than five years later.
Paying drivers to hit tractor-trailers
According to the Justice Department account that CarScoops summarized, Keating paid a cooperating witness to stage tractor-trailer and other collisions and then referred the people in those vehicles to attorneys, himself included. The pricing was $1,000 per passenger when a tractor-trailer was involved and $500 per passenger otherwise. He also advanced the organizer thousands of dollars and set the number of crashes owed according to the money he had paid, which turned each collision into a line item.
Keating admitted paying for 31 staged accidents, FreightWaves reported, and told investigators he represented 77 plaintiffs in the lawsuits that followed. CarScoops describes his involvement more loosely as over two dozen staged tractor-trailer collisions, which is consistent with a count of 31. Most of the crashes happened in New Orleans East and Gentilly, often near a truck stop, according to WLOX in New Orleans, and prosecutors say dozens of drivers deliberately struck 18-wheelers between 2015 and 2020.
CarScoops adds a detail that shows how the crashes worked on the road. The cooperating witness admitted acting as the “slammer” in two June 2017 collisions in which he drove into 18-wheelers, and an unnamed “spotter” picked him up afterward. The roles were divided deliberately: one person to cause the impact, another to collect the driver, and a lawyer waiting to file the claim, with the per-passenger price fixed in advance by whether a tractor-trailer was struck.
The lawsuits themselves were built on false statements. Keating filed suits with incorrect information about who was driving, who was at fault and what injuries occurred, and the Justice Department says clients gave false deposition testimony. CarScoops reports that 17 of the staged collisions were settled for real payouts, and that about $1.5 million was paid out across Keating’s cases and his clients’ claims. Of that money, he kept roughly $358,000 in attorney fees.
Judge Nanette Brown and the 32-month term
U.S. District Judge Nanette Brown imposed the sentence, FreightWaves reported on Oct. 16, and it came in well below the federal guidelines range of 57 to 60 months. Prosecutors had asked for two years, so the 32 months landed above the government’s own recommendation. Keating’s attorney, Brian Capitelli, had asked for probation, and the defense also asked the Bureau of Prisons to place him at FCI Beaumont Low, citing health issues. Keating must report to prison by Jan. 11, 2027.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Klebba argued that cooperation set Keating apart. As FreightWaves quoted him, “when faced with a choice, Mr. Keating chose to admit to his misdeeds, forfeit his law license and tell the truth.” The forfeited law license is the professional cost on top of the prison term, and the quote explains why prosecutors asked for less than the guidelines called for. FreightWaves paraphrased U.S. Attorney David Courcelle’s prepared statement but did not quote him directly.
One piece of a larger Louisiana prosecution
Keating is not the only lawyer to face a courtroom over the scheme. In March 2026 a federal jury convicted attorneys Jason Giles and Vanessa Motta of multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, Fox 8 in New Orleans reported. Unlike Keating, who admitted his role in 2021, those defendants went to trial, and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana said at the time of Keating’s sentencing that the pair had “tarnished their own profession.”
The Justice Department says it charged 63 people in total from the investigation. Trade coverage tracked Keating’s case through years of delay: Transport Topics covered the guilty plea, and FreightWaves later reported that the sentencing was delayed again before the Oct. 15 hearing finally set his punishment.
The arrangement, as the Justice Department describes it, was unusually mechanical. Payments were tied to passenger counts, crash quotas were tied to payments, and court filings tied the resulting lawsuits to injuries and fault that had been invented. Pricing, quotas and false filings were parts of one arrangement rather than separate disputes over who was at fault, and that is the conduct to which Keating pleaded guilty as conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Still open is how the remaining defendants in the wider case will fare, since the 32-month term, the restitution figure and the Jan. 11, 2027 report date apply only to Keating. For the trucking companies and insurers whose vehicles were struck, the record now includes a named lawyer, a quantified payout of about $1.5 million and a court-ordered repayment of $657,405.34.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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