Michigan City, Ind. woman pleads guilty in phony car accidents case

A Michigan City woman admits to her role in a scheme to stage phony car accidents in the region in order to collect insurance payouts, court records filed Friday show. Shanise Kelley, 30, filed the amended plea agreement in U.S. District Court, Hammond, Friday, pledging to cooperate with prosecutors in other cases and admitting to one felony count of mail fraud. In her plea agreement, which still needs to be accepted by a judge at a future date, Kelley admits that she and others staged car accidents and filed false insurance claims between 2006 and 2009 in Northwest Indiana and Illinois. Kelley’s court filings detail one December 2006 case in which she admits she and others staged an accident in LaPorte County. She claimed to have been driving a 1992 BMW that collided with a Chrysler LHS and a Ford Crown Victoria. "However, the accident never occurred," Kelley states in the court filings.