Men use bear costume to attack cars, then claim insurance

CALIFORNIA: Three people were sentenced this week in an insurance fraud scam that saw them wear a bear costume while damaging luxury cars in California.

Alfiya Zuckerman, Ruben Tamrazian, and Vahe Muradkhanyan all pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud and were sentenced to 180 days in jail, while a fourth person involved in the scheme, Ararat Chirkinian, has a preliminary hearing scheduled for September.

The four were caught because they submitted videos of three fake attacks on cars to three different companies, but one group of investigators noticed the “bear” in a Rolls Royce moved in ways more similar to a human, The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian reported.

“What may have looked unbelievable turned out to be exactly that,” Ricardo Lara, commissioner of California’s Department of Insurance, said in a press release.

“Insurance fraud is a serious crime that drives up costs for consumers, and no scheme is too outrageous for us to investigate,” Lara said.

State investigators launched “Operation Bear Claw” after State Farm Insurance flagged a claim reporting that a bear entered a 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost and damaged the inside of the car, and included video of the attack, the department said.

A claims investigator recognized that the bear was moving less like a bear and more like a human, and a biologist in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed that the purported bear was “clearly a human in a bear suit.”

The officials also noted that brown bears have not been seen in California since the 1920s.

Investigators then uncovered two similar claims — one for a 2015 Mercedes G63 and one for a 2022 Mercedes E350 — that had been submitted to other insurance companies with similar video and were claimed to have occurred at the place, on the same day.

Law enforcement officials later executed search warrants and found a bear costume, which included fake claws, in the suspects’ home.

“It’s definitely out of the ordinary,” Capt. Eric Hood, who led the California Department of Insurance’s investigation into the alleged bear attacks, told The Times.

“I don’t think we saw anything to that extent in the past where they got a bear suit,” he said. “It’s unique.”