Four people have been arrested on suspicion of insurance fraud after claiming their cars were damaged by a bear – which turned out to be someone dressed up as one of the animals, officials said.
Home surveillance footage submitted to an insurance company shows the so-called bear entering and damaging a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost while it was parked near Lake Arrowhead, northeast of Los Angeles, on 28 January, the California Department of Insurance (CDI) said.
“Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” the CDI added
Claims were also submitted for damage to two other cars – a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350 – to two different insurance companies.
Home surveillance footage accompanied those claims too, with the CDI saying that the suspects “again appeared to use a bear costume to make it appear that a bear also entered and damaged those vehicles”.
All three insurance claims gave the “same date of loss” and the same location, the CDI said.
The alleged scam cost the relevant insurance companies $141,839 (£111,788).
The department has released an image of a brown furry costume that was found in a search of the suspects’ home. It was accompanied by metal hand tools that could be used to simulate claw marks.
The footage from the three claims suggests the incidents were filmed outside the same property, on the same night, but at different times.
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Images released by the CDI of inside the vehicles appear to show minor scratches on seats and doors that were intended to pass for claw marks.
Bears do live in the Lake Arrowhead area, however when investigators showed the videos to a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife they “opined it was clearly a human in a bear suit”, the CDI said.
Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, all from California, were arrested on charges of insurance fraud and conspiracy, the department added.
CDI detectives were assisted by the Glendale Police Department and the California Highway Patrol. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting this case.