Man dresses up as bear to carry out bizarre attack on car in fake 'insurance claim scam'

Four people have been arrested after they allegedly faked on expensive cars and claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars on .

Home sent to the insurance company apparently shows a bear climbing inside of a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost while it was parked near Lake Arrowhead, northeast of Los Angeles, on January 28 of this year. But all was not as it seemed.

"Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume," the California Department of Insurance (CDI) said

Two other claims were also submitted for “bear” damage to other cars, a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350 to two other insurance companies.

These claims also came with footage from a home security camera. The CID said the suspects had "again appeared to use a bear costume to make it appear that a bear also entered and damaged those vehicles".

The three claims, although for different cars, all come from the same location and gave the same “date of loss”. The alleged insurance scam cost the three companies a total of $141,839 (£111,788).

Police and detectives from the CDI investigated the case and the department posted a picture of a brown furry costume found during a search of a suspect’s home.

The bear suit also came with sharp metal “claws” that could have been used to simulate claw marks on the interiors and upholstery of the vehicles.

The timing of the three CCTV tapes sent to insurers indicates that the three clips were filmed one after the other on the same night. Bears do live in the Lake Arrowhead area, but a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was shown the tapes and said “it was clearly a human in a bear suit", according to the CDI statement.

Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, all from California, were arrested on charges of insurance fraud and conspiracy, the department added.

The investigation was undertaken by CDI detectives alongside the Glendale Police Department and the California Highway Patrol. San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office is prosecuting the case.