New Orleans Man Guilty of Murder in Connection with Staged Automobile Collisions in the New Orleans Area

US Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana, January 16, 2025

NEW ORLEANS – The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced that RYAN J. HARRIS, a/k/a “Red,” (“HARRIS”), age 36, of New Orleans, pled guilty today before United States District Judge Wendy B. Vitter to a three-count superseding bill of information.

Count One charged him with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1341, 1343, and 1349.  Count Two charged him with wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 and 2.  Count Three charged him with causing death through the use of a firearm, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 924(j) and 2.

According to court filings, HARRIS admitted to acting as a “slammer” in a scheme in which he and his co-conspirators intentionally staged automobile collisions in the New Orleans metropolitan area.  As a slammer, HARRIS drove automobiles and intentionally collided them with 18-wheeler tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles in order to stage these collisions.  After the collisions, the slammers fled the scene, and a passenger would falsely claim to have been the driver during the collision.  Thereafter, the passengers who had been recruited to be part of the scheme would file false insurance claims.  HARRIS then referred these passengers to attorneys, also a part of the scheme, who then filed fraudulent lawsuits on the passengers’ behalf.  HARRIS also admitted to aiding and abetting in the murder of a cooperating federal witness, Cornelius Garrison.  Garrison, a slammer who had been covertly cooperating with federal agents since October 2019 regarding the staged automobile collision scheme, was shot outside of his home in New Orleans on September 22, 2020.

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