Red light cameras spot luxury car that Houston woman claimed was destroyed by Katrina

(Houston) -- Lots of Katrina fraud cases have made headlines since the historic storm of 2005, but this is the first felony indictment based on red light cameras.

Shauna Crowden Hunter of New Orleans was indicted today by a federal grand jury in Houston, charging her with one count of Mail Fraud.

Federal agents say she filed an insurance claim for her brand new 2005 BMW 525i after Katrina made landfall.   Her claim resulted in a check for $3,443 being sent directly to her, while the entire remaining car note was paid off with another insurance check for $51,909.

Hunter claimed that she last saw the car parked in front of her house on North Lake Carmel Drive in New Orleans, and she later found out it was destroyed by flooding.   At one point, she claimed the car had been located and was parked in a recovery lot.

Her Louisiana license plate of NPT-591 should have been parked in that storage lot, but agents say that license plate started popping up on their computer database screens when someone started running red lights in that car in October 2008.

First, a red light camera snapped photos of that BMW running a red light at South Carrollton and Palmetto in New Orleans on October 13, 2008.    Then, days later, the same car blasted through the light at St. Charles Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, causing that camera to snap a picture.

When the tickets weren't paid, it resulted in a search being conducted in various law enforcement computers, where the Katrina flood claim was discovered.

Federal agents say cameras at Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana also picked up the car entering the short term parking garage on October 27, 2008.   That's where police caught up with the car in April 2009.

The indictment accuses Hunter of hiding the car in that garage to wait for the heat to die down.   The odometer read out 29,900 miles when police hauled the car away.

Agents caught up with a friend who admitted to helping Hunter in hiding the car at the airport as part of the racket.   That friend's information helped lead to the grand jury indictment in Houston.

The indictment paperwork lists several aliases for Hunter, who evacuated to Houston on August 28, 2005 and lived in Houston for several months.    Agents say she also goes by other names:

• Shauna Crowden
• Shauna Hunter-Crowden
• Shauna Desha Crowden

A federal arrest warrant has been issued for her, but agents in Houston and New Orleans have been unable to locate her.    Once she's caught, she could spent 5-years in federal prison if she's convicted.

Without the red light camera photos, investigators would have had no proof whatsoever that the car remained on the streets in spite of the insurance claim.