‘Bear’ that damaged luxury cars was ‘clearly a human in a bear suit,’ CA officials say
Earlier this year, a bear wandered into three luxury cars in the California mountains.
The bear thrashed the cars’ interiors, leaving behind punctured seats and clawed doors, insurance claim videos provided by the California Department of Insurance show.
The car owners were paid out $141,839, officials said in a Nov. 13 news release.
But, turns out, it was all an elaborate ruse; the “bear” was actually a person donning a bear costume, officials said.
And now, four Los Angeles-area residents were arrested after they were accused of being part of the ploy and have been charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy, according to officials.
“This is definitely unique, but we have seen, through our cases, that people will do a lot of things to try and get an undeserved insurance payout,” Allison Hensley, deputy press secretary with the department, told the Southern California News Group.
The department said it started looking into the case when an insurance company suspected something was off with a Jan. 28 claim out of Lake Arrowhead.
In the claim, the suspects said a bear entered a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost and “caused interior damage to the vehicle,” officials said.
The claimants provided video to the insurance company, showing a “bear” inside the car, the department said.
However, when investigators reviewed the footage, they “determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” officials said.
As detectives dug into the case further, they found the suspects had filed two more claims that involved two Mercedes with separate insurance companies, officials said.
Again, the suspects “appeared to use a bear costume to make it appear that a bear also entered and damaged those vehicles,” the department said.
With these claims, they also provided video footage of the “bear” rummaging through the cars, officials said.
Officials said to ensure the animal from the video was in fact not a bear, they had a California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist review the footage.
“They also opined it was clearly a human in a bear suit,” officials said.
Additionally, while serving a search warrant at the suspects’ home, “detectives found the bear costume,” officials said.
“It isn’t the first case that we’ve seen that has baffled us, but this one definitely was the first one in a while,” Hensley told the Southern California News Group.
The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office will prosecute the case, officials said.
This story was originally published November 14, 2024 at 11:53 AM with the headline "‘Bear’ that damaged luxury cars was ‘clearly a human in a bear suit,’ CA officials say."
