Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr., states his case of how officials of the Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology (LSBC) perpetrated “fraud” at the Senate Commerce Committee meeting of May 21, 2025.
Today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature is the first of a four-part series ahead of the next LSBC meeting. In it, Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr., provides extremely compelling evidence to back up his firm contention that LSBC officials committed “fraud” in representations made to the Louisiana Senate Commerce Committee on May 21, 2025:
8/20/25: Phillips states his case for his contention of LSBC officials perpetrating “fraud” in obtaining a fee increase in the 2025 Louisiana Legislative Regular Session.
As you are aware, I have been seeking the repair costs for this building since 4/22/25. When I got them, I was not surprised that, contrary to indications made by this Board that the costs would “exceed $1 million” that, as I stated in Legislative testimony, the numbers “are inflated.” The actual number is $199,500, and that includes a $115,000 roof replacement which I contend is itself inflated.
I draw your attention to the fact that the figures are on LSBC letterhead containing each of your names at the top of the first page.
I believe that the $1 million building repair costs representations made by this Board enabled you to obtain a $400,000 a year fee increase by means of extreme deceit, and, to be quite blunt, fraudulent representations made to the entire Senate Commerce Committee.
Because of the extreme deceit, exploitation, and, in my opinion, outright fraud that you have perpetrated against the licensees of this state, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the public at large entailing your statements to the Senate Commerce Committee entailing the fee increase, I am informing each of you that I intend to seek a State Legislator to sponsor a bill in the 2026 Legislative Session to roll back the $10 fee increase to $25. You will have obtained $400,000 through your fraudulent representations, and that amount is well over the amount you needed to solve the building issues had you simply been honest in your representations.
== LSBC’s own internal document showing that, notwithstanding representations made by LSBC officials to the Senate Commerce Committee that building repair costs “exceed $1 million,” the actual total for such repairs is $199,500. Here are the individual components from the LSBC’s own internal document:
Roof Repair (which Phillips claims is itself highly inflated): $115,000
Flooring: $17,500
Electrical: $17,000
Ceiling: $18,000
Painting Interior: $25,000
Retention Building: $7,000
== LSBC interior building photos which Rev. Phillips contends were provided to Rep. Rhonda Butler for her to then disseminate to all of her colleagues (which she did) with the “additional fraudulent statements” made by LSBC officials that they lacked the funds to make the repairs (which cost, by their own internal numbers, $199,500) when, in reality, the LSBC was sitting on $1.6 million in UNRESTRICTED CASH!!
Phillips asserts (and placed it in writing to the individual LSBC Members) that LSBC officials “exploited” the workers in that building by subjecting them to rainfall coming through the roof, etc. all as part of a “fraudulent scheme” to convince Legislators to grant them a massive fee increase which, in its original proposal in Butler’s bill, called for a $1 million A YEAR fee increase upon the licensees of this state.
That wraps it up for segment one of this series but, as Burns states in the video above, segment two will be out in just a few days, and it should prove quite revealing in its own right!
U. S. Congressman Cleo Fields prepares to answer a question posed by Sound Off Louisiana’s Burns at the Baton Rouge Press Club meeting of Monday, July 28, 2025.
In today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature, we briefly update three (3) civil lawsuits entailing Louisiana State Police (LSP):
Mr. Brown successfully defended himself at the trial of that matter, resulting in his acquittal. A criminal charge was also brought against Mr. Brown in the 5th Judicial District in another matter involving an incident which occurred while Mr. Brown was acting within the scope of his duties as a Trooper with LSP. The
State dismissed this charge. (1) Following the resolution of these matters, counsel for Mr. Brown mailed correspondence to LSP requesting that, pursuant to LSA-R.S. 42:1442, Mr. Brown be reimbursed $210,813.40 for his attorney’s fees which he incurred in the defense of the aforementioned. LSP denied this request.
As seen above, LSA-R.S. 42:1442 sets forth certain conditions which, when met, require the governing authority who employed the officer at the time to reimburse the officer for his attorney’s fees. These conditions require: 1) That the alleged criminal act must have occurred when the law enforcement was acting in good faith in the performance or in further of the course and scope of his employment; and 2) That the prosecution was terminated by dismissal, acquittal, or prescription. At all relevant times, Mr. Brown acted in good faith in the performance or in furtherance of the course and scope of his employment with LSP. Furthermore, the aforementioned criminal charges all resulted in acquittal or dismissal by the State. Accordingly, Mr. Brown is entitled to reimbursement of the reasonable attorney’s fees he incurred pursuant to LSA-R.S. 42:1442.
(1) Two criminal matters against Mr. Brown also arose in the 4th JDC. Mr. Brown was never indicted on these charges, and the State dismissed both matters.
FURTHER ANSWERING, Defendant, the State of Louisiana, through the Department of Public Safety & Corrections, Office of State Police, aver that Jacob Brown was not acting in good faith in the performance or in the furtherance of the course and scope of his employment as defined by law and the policies and procedures of the law enforcement agency and he is not entitled to the reimbursement of attorney fees and expenses under LSA- R.S. 42:1442.
We reached out both to LSP and to Brown’s attorney for comment as to where the matter may stand since it has been nearly a year since any filing was made into the public record. LSP, through LSP Commander of Public Affairs, Captain Russell Graham, responded: “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond. However, we cannot speak to any matters that are pending litigation.” Brown’s attorney, Russell A. Woodward, Jr., of Ruston, declined to make comment for this feature.
Ronald Greene:
U. S. Congressman Cleo Fields (D-Baton Rouge) was the guest speaker at the Baton Rouge Press Club meeting of Monday, July 28, 2025. Sound Off Louisiana‘s Burns posed a question of Fields entailing his thoughts of the U. S. Justice Department issuing a Pattern and Practices report in the waning days of the Biden Administration (though Burns misspoke and said the “waning days of the Obama Administration”) and the Justice Department’s subsequent retraction of the report.
Fields opted to focus almost all of his response to the question on his efforts to convince Louisiana State Attorney General Liz Murrill to settle the civil lawsuit filed by the Greene family entailing Greene’s much-publicized arrest and in-custody death on or around May 9, 2019. Here’s Burns’ question and Fields’ response:
7/28/25: Fields responds to Burns’ question entailing the U. S. Justice Department’s release of a Patterns and Practices Report in the waning days of the Biden Administration and the subsequent full retraction of that report three months later.
The latest filing in the Greene civil case is this Case Management Order. We are about to present a bit of an oversimplification of the Order in the following table, but the table will nevertheless provide a basic and broad guideline of the three (3) phases of discovery which have been ordered by the Court and the fact that a mandatory nonbinding mediation is to be conducted after each phase of discovery is completed:
Phase of Discovery
Broad Categories of Discovery to Be Conducted
Date by Which Nonbinding Mediation Must Be Conducted
One.
Greene family history, Greene's medical history, Greene's substance abuse (if any), Greene's encounters with law enforcement (if any), Greene's criminal record (if any), autopsy, causation of death.
December 7, 2025.
Two.
Discovery and dispositive motions by any defendant who is not alleged to have used force of any kind on Ronald Greene during or after the pursuit and apprehension, but who did respond to the scene and witness the on-scene events subsequent to the pursuit and apprehension of Ronald Greene (referred to herein as “Bystanders”).
July 15, 2026.
Three.
All remaining discovery and dispositive motions by any defendant who is alleged to have used force of any kind on Ronald Greene during or after the pursuit and apprehension.
November 15, 2026.
As is evidenced by the Fields video above, he chose to alter the specific content of Burns’ question regarding his thoughts on the U. S. Justice Department’s issuance of the Pattern and Practices Report in early January only to retract the report in its entirety about three months later. In other words, Fields avoided providing his thoughts on the two developments by altering Burns’ question to be if he “had any more information,” which is not what Burns asked.
Fields’ avoidance of providing his thoughts on the U. S. Justice Department’s actions notwithstanding, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry certainly didn’t mince his words about his thoughts on the contents of the report. From the above linked Domingue article:
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, criticized the report as an attempt “to diminish the service and exceptionality of” the state police. The federal probe began in 2022 amid fallout from the in-custody death of Ronald Greene, who was beaten, tased and dragged on a rural road in northern Louisiana.
The “exceptionality of” the state police. What a statement in light of all of the problematic LSP actions on which we’ve reported in the ten (10) years of this blog’s existence!
Lastly, let us offer our opinion on Fields’ chances of success in his attempts to convince Murrill to settle the Greene litigation. Our own thoughts are that hell will freeze over before that happens! Gov. Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill are both staunchly pro-law-enforcement to such a degree that they will not even acknowledge obvious serious shortcomings of LSP. Neither Landry nor Murrill would ever be willing to accept the political blowback either of them would receive from the law enforcement community in Louisiana were they to settle the litigation. Those are our own sentiments on the matter, but only time will tell whether we’re right or not.
Obviously, if Plaintiff Tayla Greene wishes to settle for a pittance, Murrill would agree to that, but we see that potential to be equally likely as hell freezing over first. In short, we just don’t see the ingredients being present for a successful resolution of this matter short of a jury trial.
It will likely take almost two years (perhaps more) judging by the Order referenced in this feature to find out if any settlement is ever reached in the Ronald Greene civil matter, but our money is on it not happening and a trial being conducted on the matter.
In conclusion regarding Fields’ appearance at the Baton Rouge Press Club, the vast majority of that presentation dealt with him bashing President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Anyone is welcome to view Fields’ appearance in its entirety by clicking here.
Segment of court transcript in which 14th JDC Judge David Ritchie expresses his opinion of Gov. Landry’s legal skills in admonishing Billy Broussard to, “choose your lawyer carefully” in the future.
************** Editor’s Note: In the original publication of this feature, we inadvertently failed to provide the documented proof that former GOHSEP Director Kevin Davis had been “briefed” on the Indian Bayou / Billy Broussard matter on Monday, June 29, 2015 at 11:02 a.m., a mere 2-1/2 hours prior to a meeting scheduled to be held at 1:30 p.m. that same day at then-Sen. Fred Mills’ office. We have updated the feature to include that documented proof of the “briefing” from Mark DeBosier to Davis as placed on prominent display within this updated feature. **************
Today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature entails what we believe to be the best and most succinct arguments posed by Billy Broussard regarding the $1 million plus that he has alleged that he was cheated out of due to fraud which he alleges was perpetrated by several governmental officials associated with the now-non-existent Gravity Drainage District 8 of Ward 1 of Calcasieu Parish:
7/10/25: Broussard makes formal apology to Gov. Landry and makes a direct correlation (which we assert is spot-on accurate) that he was the equivalent of Dr. William Blalock in the Shiva Akula Federal Medicare Fraud Case.
Here are links and support documents Broussard references in the video:
The Trump Administration’s continuing fight against fraud, waste and abuse
The beginning of the second Trump administration brought the inception of DOGE and its tech-savvy staff tasked with finding fraud, waste, and abuse in government, including Medicare and Social Security.
HHS and CMS appear to be continuing DOGE’s mission with the introduction of an agreement among private insurance companies to “pledge to streamline and improve the prior authorization processes for Medicare Advantage, Medicaid Managed Care, Health Insurance Marketplace and commercial plans covering nearly eight out of 10 Americans.” Humana recently announced a plan to reduce prior authorizations by one-third and reduce wait times for others.
The introduction of the short list of Medicare services for prior authorization will test how well technologies such as machine learning and AI can streamline the prior authorization process. “CMS is committed to crushing fraud, waste, and abuse, and the WISeR Model will help root out waste in Original Medicare,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
As part of the goal of rooting out waste and fraud, the Justice Department conducted a 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown. Results were released on June 30, 2025, and included charges against more than 300 defendants who were accused of a range of health care fraud schemes.
One particular indictment can provide some insight as to how or why some of the procedures/services were selected for the list. In one particular case, three defendants in Arizona allegedly conspired to give elderly Medicare recipients unnecessary skin grafts, known as “amniotic wound allografts.” The defendants allegedly pocketed millions of dollars and billed for “more than over $1 billion in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and other health benefit providers for these medically unnecessary allografts.” To make matters worse, according to the indictment, the defendants are alleged to have targeted Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom were terminally ill in hospice care.
The WISeR Model and how the program will work
The WISeR Model (Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction) is meant to test the use of enhanced technologies, such as AI and machine learning, to decrease “certain wasteful or low-value services shown to have little to no clinical, evidence-based benefit.” CMS chooses services that “have been identified as particularly vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse, or inappropriate use.”
— Here’s a copy of the business card which Kirk Harmon supplied to Billy Broussard, and it was Harmon who marked and directed all of the debris which Broussard removed from Indian Bayou:
Kirk Harmon’s business card, who represented himself as a GOHSEP monitor and who marked and ordered Broussard to remove all of the debris he removed in the Indian Bayou Project.
In our opinion, very, very importantly, as evidenced by the 1:19 – 1:31 mark of this video, Mr. Michael Duane Higdon, who was a self-proclaimed monitor on the Indian Bayou project, states: “I was a monitor, and actually what they hired me for was to shuttle Kirk Harmon, the State Inspector, back and forth by boat.” We don’t see how there can be any greater proof that, not only did Broussard rely upon the orders of Harmon in removing the debris he was ordered and directed to remove, but so did Higdon, who readily admitted that he was hired for the sole purpose of “shuttlling Harmon (who he himself identified as a “state monitor“) back and forth by boat!”
— The 2006 flooding Broussard references in the video above. Broussard strongly contends that flooding was falsely attributed to Hurricane Rita debris when, in reality, the flooding resulted from neglect to maintain the waterways which allowed sinker cypress trees to accumulate in significant quantities that impeded the flow of water and which he subsequently cleared at the direct order of Kirk Harmon.
— The email to Kirk Harmon which demonstrates clearly that another Project Worksheet Version would be required for all of the additional debris being uncovered and the need for obtaining the new version so as to, “keep the contractor (Broussard) from having to stop and wait on orders.” We would note that Broussard did in fact have to cease all work for about approximately three (3) weeks before being instructed to resume debris removal operations:
Email from Harmon to Crabb wherein he openly states, “With the job about 10% complete, and 200 CY (cubic yards) total, I believe the estimate on the FEMA assessment of 850 CY (cubic yards) is going to come in very low. When they reach a blockage or a tree in the canal to be cleared, they are finding two to three additional trees below the water line.”
The above email from Mark DeBosier to Kevin Davis (which contained only the attachment which is displayed next) demonstrates Broussard’s point that Davis was “briefed” on the Indian Bayou matter literally hours before the meeting between Broussard, then-Sen. Fred Mills, and Davis. Further, in the attachment which follows, DeBosier clearly identifies an additional $453,000 in additional eligible debris which Broussard removed from the Bayou, yet he was never paid for doing so.
Then Sen. Fred Mills setting up the meeting between Davis, Mills, and Broussard (note that Davis responded with, “need Mark Riley to get info,” when what he meant was, “need Mark DeBosier to get info,” which is what caused the “briefing document” to be created as illustrated above.
Then Sen. Fred Mills’ office confirming the meeting to transpire on Monday, June 29, 2015 at 1:30 p.m. Unbeknownst to Broussard on the day of the meeting, Davis had been “briefed” on the matter 2-1/2 hours before as evidenced by the email from DeBosier to Davis sent at 11:02 a.m. that same day.
The above video was taped on July 10, 2025. Near the end of the video, Burns and Broussard allude to the vacancy on the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) as a result of Jared Caruso-Riecke’s May 23, 2015 resignation from the LSPC.
Broussard openly states that he has seen the three (3) nominations made by Dillard University President Monique Guillory which she submitted on June 20, 2025. Broussard even stated his glee that Clyde Construction’s CEO Jonathan Kernion would be the one Gov. Landry tapped to fill the Riecke vacancy. Operating under the belief that Gov. Landry still had ten (10) days left to make his selection, however, Burns cautioned him not to get out in front of Gov. Landry.
Kernion should be sworn in on Thursday, August 14, 2025; however, Burns will not be present for the swearing in because he has an ophthalmology appointment in Houston that morning.
Anyone is welcome to click on the link and view the requirements for such “special meals,” but it only takes a minute to see that LSP was in very obvious violation of many of the provisions of that section of the policy, not the least of which is that they should have gotten Division of Administration prior approval for the purchase of the meals.
One source had this to say: “DPS does not have the authority to approve a purchase of this type with state issued funds so that memo is useless.”
The source was referencing the approval memos signed off by LTC Hasselback contained within the above-linked “meal gate scandal” feature.
Should Hodges fail to do so, to us, it can only mean one of two things: #1) he has no real desire to insist upon integrity of those under him, particularly to be the Chairman of the very Commission which passes judgment upon other troopers, or #2) Hodges’ own hands are tied because he is an integral part of the lack of integrity within LSP. That’s our assessment for what it’s worth.
