You can’t help but admire the attempt to break into luxury cars while dressed as a bear. It was clever, but it didn’t work. California was hit with a string of luxury cars being damaged or broken into by bears, something you might see quite a bit in California as bears look for food. But someone noticed something peculiar about this line of break-ins and some nifty investigations revealed the truth. It wasn’t a bear at all, just a person in a costume robbing cars!
Four people in LA were arrested for trying to defraud multiple insurance companies out of almost $142,000 by claiming a bear damaged their vehicle. But the California Insurance Department sniffed something sketchy about all the complaints or videos being sent in. Something didn’t seem right, and AP pointed it all out in a news report:
In what it has dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” the California Insurance Department said four Los Angeles residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of defrauding three insurance companies out of nearly $142,000 by claiming a bear had caused damage to their vehicles.
The group is accused of providing video footage from the San Bernardino Mountains in January of a bear moving inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes to the insurance companies as part of their damage claims, the department said. Photos provided by the insurance department show what appeared to be scratches on the seats and doors. The company viewing video of the Rolls-Royce suspected it was not a bear inside, but someone in a bear costume.
To make things even funnier, they had someone from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife watch the videos. That official said it was “clearly a human in a bear suit.” And if you want to know what happened next, then you’ll be laughing when you find out that authorities FOUND THE BEAR COSTUME in one of the suspect’s home.
