Authorities in California have locked up three people for running one of the most absurd insurance fraud schemes in recent memory: staging fake bear attacks on luxury cars using a person in a costume.
The scam centered on a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost parked at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains. In 2024, the conspirators filed an insurance claim claiming a bear had damaged the vehicle and submitted video evidence of the alleged attack. The footage showed a figure entering the car and rummaging through the interior.
There was just one problem: the bear was unmistakably human.
State insurance investigators brought in a wildlife biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to examine the videos. The expert's conclusion was definitive: a person wearing a bear suit, not an actual animal.
Detectives later recovered the costume itself during a search warrant executed at one suspect's home. Investigators also uncovered two additional fraudulent claims involving similar incidents at Mercedes vehicles, all apparently staged by the same individual in costume.
Alfiya Zuckerman, 39; Ruben Tamrazian, 26; and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, each pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud. They received 180-day jail sentences. Zuckerman and Tamrazian were ordered to pay restitution exceeding $52,000 apiece. Muradkhanyan's restitution amount had not yet been set.
A fourth suspect, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, remains in the case. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for September.
Ricardo Lara, California's insurance commissioner, used the case to underscore the seriousness of fraud enforcement. "Insurance fraud is a serious crime that drives up costs for consumers, and no scheme is too outrageous for us to investigate," Lara said in a statement following Thursday's sentencing.
Author James Rodriguez: "You have to respect the audacity of trying to pass off a person in a fursuit as a real bear to insurance companies, and you have to love that it took exactly zero expertise to unravel it."
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