I can't help but imagine this harebrained scheme started over a couple of drinks. "What If I dressed up in a bear costume and wrecked your car, dude? That way you can get the insurance money!" Well, that's exactly what once happened in Southern California, and it went about as well as you can imagine.
The person wore a bear costume to damage the luxury cars of his friends. It was all a scheme concocted by the friends to get insurance payouts. Instead, authorities ended up arresting and charging four people with nsurance fraud and conspiracy. I suppose they didn't think it would be suspicious that a bear took such an interest to a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost.
The fake bear broke into the car on January 10th. They had parked it at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains. The owner then submitted the video to the insurance company of the "bear" damaging the vehicle.
The insurance company took one look at the video, and they instantly knew. "Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume," the California Department of Insurance and Fraud revealed in a statement.
Bear In The Slammer
Authorities charged Ruben Tamrazian, Ararat Chirkinian, Vahe Muradkhanyan and Alfiya Zuckerman with fraud.
"The insurance companies were defrauded of $141,839, because of the alleged fraud committed by the suspects," the California Department of Insurance stated. They've dubbed the entire thing "Operation Bear Claw," which sounds like a killer James Bond sequel!
According to investigators, the costume didn't hold up even on a grainy security video. The fur of the animal was too shiny and smooth looking to be anything other than a Halloween costume. Meanwhile, the claw marks themselves were a bit too straight and parallel. It's almost as if someone had used blades instead of claws.
The friends also didn't think authorities would find it suspicious that the animal attacked multiple cars. Because, they did the exact same thing two more times.
"Each of those claims involved two different vehicles, a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350, and the suspects again appeared to use a bear costume to make it appear that a bear also entered and damaged those vehicles," the California Department of Insurance claimed.
