Human in Bear Suit Was Used to Defraud Insurance Companies, Officials Say

A video that was submitted as part of an insurance claim in January appeared to capture a disturbing scene: a brown bear ransacking a Rolls-Royce that was parked in a Southern California driveway.

Similar videos involving other luxury cars were submitted to two additional insurers, and the three companies collectively paid out more than $140,000.

But something about the footage seemed off, and one of the companies reported the video and images of claw marks on the upholstery to the California Department of Insurance. On Wednesday, after concluding an investigation it called Operation Bear Claw, the department said it had determined that the bear was not, in fact, a bear.

“Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” the department said in a news release. The scratch marks inside the vehicles, it said, were made with a claw-like kitchen accessory {snip}

The California Department of Insurance said on Wednesday that four Los Angeles County residents had been arrested. Ruben Tamrazian, 26; Ararat Chirkinian, 39; and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, all of Glendale, Calif.; and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Los Angeles, each face charges of insurance fraud and conspiracy, the department said.

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The California Department of Insurance said in its news release that the first insurance company “suspected fraud” after it received a claim related to a bear rifling through a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost on Jan. 28 {snip}

Investigators then found that similar claims had been submitted to the other insurance companies, “with the same date of loss and at the same location,” for interior damage to two other vehicles, both Mercedes-Benzes, the department said. The claims contained remarkably similar videos and photos.

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Investigators consulted a biologist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who they said confirmed their hunch that they were not dealing with a particularly dexterous bear, but rather “clearly a human in a bear suit.”

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