Three Southern California residents were sentenced to jail after masterminding a scheme in which they staged fake bear attacks on their luxury cars, then collected more than US$141,000 (S$180,000) in insurance payouts, officials said on April 16.
To carry out the attacks, the residents had a person in a bear suit climb into the cars and use clawlike kitchen utensils to leave scratch marks, the California Department of Insurance said.
The Los Angeles County residents then filed claims to defraud three different insurance companies, the department said.
Two of the defendants – Ruben Tamrazian, 26, and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, both of Glendale, California – were sentenced to 180 days in jail, or about six months, and ordered to pay more than US$50,000 each in restitution, the department said in a news release.
Another defendant, Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village in Los Angeles, was also sentenced to 180 days in jail, while a restitution amount is yet to be determined. All three had previously pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud.
A fourth defendant, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, also of Glendale, has a preliminary court hearing scheduled for September, the department said.
It was not immediately clear if the defendants had lawyers. Court records for the case were not immediately available.
The California Department of Insurance began its investigation, called Operation Bear Claw, after an insurance company flagged a suspicious claim about a bear riffling through a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost on Jan 28, 2024, in Lake Arrowhead, California.
The defendants claimed that the bear had damaged the interior of their Rolls-Royce, with photos they submitted to the insurance company showing scratched seats and doors.
Video footage submitted with the claim and released by the department shows what appears to be a bear crawling around in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce and swatting at the dashboard.
Investigators later discovered fraudulent claims submitted to two other insurance companies that claimed a bear had damaged the interior of two Mercedes-Benzes on the same date and at the same location.
Nearly identical videos of the Mercedes-Benz break-ins, which appear to have been taken by a surveillance camera in a nearby driveway, also show the bear opening a car door and rummaging around in the front and back seats.
After its investigation, the department concluded that the culprit was not, in fact, a particularly nimble bear. The defendants were arrested in November 2024.
Detectives found an elaborate brown bear costume and meat-shredding handles, known as meat claws, while executing a search warrant.
A biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also reviewed video footage of the bear’s activities and determined that the animal was “clearly a human in a bear suit”, the California Department of Insurance said. NYTIMES