Man in bear suit attacks car over insurance fraud

Four people in Los Angeles have been arrested for insurance fraud after they claimed a bear attacked their vehicle, but it was actually a man in a bear costume.

The suspects claimed that on January 28, 2024, a bear entered their 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost and damaged the interior of the vehicle. They provided video footage of the incident, which shows the alleged bear inside the vehicle.

The California Department of Insurance subsequently launched an investigation into the incident, dubbed “Operation Bear,” after an insurance company was suspected of committing fraud.

After careful review of the video, the department said “the investigation determined that the bear was actually a person wearing a bear costume.” Detectives then discovered two similar claims from two different insurance companies and investigated further.

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The suspects in the additional claims have the same date of loss and the same place of occurrence. This time, the claims involved a 2015 Mercedes-AMG G 63 and a 2022 Mercedes-Benz E 350, and the suspects once again used bear costumes to make it appear that bears had entered and damaged those vehicles as well.

Video was also provided to both insurance companies to substantiate the claims, which can be seen in the same video from the Department of Insurance.

To further confirm it wasn’t a real bear, the department said a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was brought in to review three alleged bear videos and agreed it was a person in a bear suit.

Detectives executed a search warrant on Nov. 13 and found the bear costume at the suspect’s home. The suspect was also spotted using a meat claw, a tool used by chefs to chop meat, to simulate a bear attack.

The state insurance department said the insurance company was defrauded of $141,839 in the alleged fraud case.

Detectives were assisted by police authorities across California, where the district attorney’s office is prosecuting the case.