Four people have been arrested for insurance fraud in Los Angeles, who disguised themselves as bears to cause damage to their vehicles.
Four residents of his area Los Angeles were arrested and charged with insurance fraud, after they allegedly used bear suits to make it look like their luxury vehicles had been damaged by wild animal.
The “Operation Bear Claw“, as this clever insurance fraud scheme was called by its authorities Californiabegan in January of this year, when the four suspects claimed that a bear had entered the 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost, while she was stationed at Lake Arrowhead, and caused extensive internal damage.
The area is located at San Bernardino, an area famous for the big black bear populationbut the video provided to the insurance company by the suspects themselves was more than suspicious. It showed a furry animal getting into her back seat Rolls Royce and to it it scratches. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says the only bears in the state are black bears, and this one was light brown, but her movements didn’t look much like a bear either.
“Upon further review of the video, the investigation determined that the bear was actually a person in a bear costume“, she said police at NPR. “The Department had a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife review the three alleged videos of the bear and also determined that it was clearly a man in a bear suit».
Investigators later found that the four suspects had filed two more insurance claims involving bear attacks in other luxury vehicles – a Mercedes G63 AMG of 2015 and one 2022 Mercedes E350 – and they became pretty sure they were dealing with a scam. But they didn’t want to leave anything to chance and decided to get the ultimate piece of evidence… the bear itself.
California police executed a search warrant at the home of the four suspects and found a bear costume with a furry head, paws and claw-shaped metal tools used to make the damages. The case is currently under investigation, but if found guilty, the four suspects could face several years in prison for defrauding companies.
