A former New Orleans attorney has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a Hurricane Ida insurance scheme that left eight homeowners without money to repair their roofs. Richard William Huye III, 34, was the managing partner of McClenny Moseley & Associates, a Houston-based law firm that filed thousands of hurricane damage lawsuits across Louisiana in the years after the 2021 storm.
The charge, brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans, carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, according to NOLA.com. Prosecutors say Huye electronically sent hundreds of false or misleading representation letters to insurance carriers, and federal filings put the total at 856 such letters, as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice. The letters allegedly claimed the firm represented homeowners directly, without disclosing that the firm was actually working on behalf of an Alabama roofing contractor.
Notably, Huye was charged through a bill of information rather than a grand jury indictment, a procedural detail that a firm was itself abandoned to another attorney in filings the case was building on. According to the Property Insurance Coverage Law Blog, that charging method typically signals a defendant has negotiated a plea agreement or cooperation deal with the government, since federal felony charges usually proceed by grand jury indictment unless a resolution has already been worked out.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, McClenny Moseley & Associates sent letters to hundreds of homeowners' insurance companies claiming it only represented the homeowners themselves. In reality, prosecutors allege, an Alabama roofing company signed up hundreds of homeowners using assignment of benefits forms — documents that allow insurers to pay contractors directly rather than paying homeowners. The roofing company then allegedly sent those insurance claims to the law firm.
An assignment of benefits arrangement can bypass anti-assignment provisions written into many homeowner policies, which is why prosecutors say Huye's firm allegedly did not disclose its relationship with the roofing company to homeowners. Per the press release cited in the case, Huye also allegedly made false claims to insurance companies in other communications and court filings, and his firm allegedly encouraged the Alabama roofing company to work in Louisiana in the wake of the storm.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said the alleged fraud affected eight homeowners specifically: those homeowners did not receive money to repair their roofs, and in some cases received less money than they were owed after funds were diverted to cover unapproved attorney's fees. Sean Toomey, a lawyer representing Huye, declined to comment on the charges when reached by NOLA.com. The bill of information itself was not immediately available.
A Firm Already in Collapse
The federal charge against Huye caps years of regulatory and judicial fallout for McClenny Moseley & Associates, which Louisiana insurance regulators have described as running the largest property insurance scheme in state history. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, the firm filed more than 3,250 property damage lawsuits in Louisiana federal courts in 2022 alone — 2,455 in the Western District and 656 in the Eastern District — with more than 1,600 of those filed in a single four-day span just before the two-year statute of limitations expired, according to Carrier Management.
The firm faced scrutiny in federal court and was subject to a state police probe in 2023. The Louisiana Supreme Court indefinitely suspended Huye from practicing law that March, and the Louisiana Department of Insurance followed in May 2023 with a record $2 million administrative fine against the firm and its partners, according to the Morris Bart Law Firm. Regulators acted after uncovering widespread duplicate filings and unauthorized lawsuits tied to the firm's operations.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Louisiana State Police Insurance Fraud Unit later opened a joint criminal investigation into the firm's use of automated text-messaging systems and offshore marketing companies to solicit disaster victims, examining marketing arrangements that improperly generated thousands of client leads, as detailed by Insurance Business America. By April 2024, the firm had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing roughly $155 million in assets against $106 million in liabilities after judicial suspensions halted its operations; the firm had previously drawn on about $30 million in third-party litigation funding to bankroll its high-volume litigation strategy.
Fallout Reached Contractors and the Insurance Market
The firm's collapse also spilled into civil court. Alabama-based Apex Roofing & Restoration — the roofing contractor at the center of the federal allegations against Huye — sued McClenny Moseley & Associates for legal malpractice in Orleans Parish Civil District Court in 2023, claiming the firm mishandled claims and never verified whether policyholders' insurance policies even permitted assignment. Apex separately alleged the firm concealed federal court disciplinary hearings and damaged the contractor's reputation.
Disputes over the firm's abandoned cases continued even after its practical demise. In July 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that McClenny Moseley & Associates cannot collect legal fees from successor law firms if the original client engagements were obtained through illegal or unethical solicitation practices, a decision that blocked the firm's bankruptcy estate from claiming funds from attorneys who took over the abandoned storm-damage cases, per WWL-TV.
A Scheme That Reshaped State Insurance Law
The scandal helped drive lasting changes to Louisiana insurance law. In 2023 the Legislature passed Act 364, codified as La. R.S. 22:1275, banning post-loss assignment of benefits contracts on residential and commercial property policies effective August 1, 2023. State regulators reissued advisory warnings in June 2025 emphasizing that post-loss benefit transfers are strictly null and void, according to InsuranceNewsNet.
The mass litigation the firm generated also fed into broader turmoil in Louisiana's property insurance market. Between 2020 and 2023, at least 11 property insurance companies operating in the state declared insolvency following major hurricanes and elevated litigation costs, shifting thousands of policyholders onto the state's insurer of last resort — a trend regulators cited excessive and questionable litigation as helping drive, per the same InsuranceNewsNet report.
It remains unclear whether additional criminal charges will follow against other firm executives or the litigation funders who backed the firm's operations, and questions remain about how the firm's remaining bankruptcy claims and any client restitution will ultimately be distributed. The case against Huye is ongoing.
