Four men were charged Wednesday, November 13, for claiming $142,000 from their insurance, under the pretext that a grizzly bear had ravaged their luxury vehicle. Investigators nevertheless uncovered the frame-up.
When broken arms engage in fraud. Four men were arrested in California on Wednesday, November 13, and charged with insurance fraud. Ruben Tamrazian, 26 years old, Ararat Chirkinian, 39 years old, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32 years old, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39 years old, had developed a ploy that they undoubtedly imagined as a foolproof way to obtain money: disguising themselves as bear to ravage their Rolls-Royce.
According to the version of events told by the California Department of Insurance, the accomplices filed a claim for compensation to the tune of $142,000, or nearly €135,000, after a brown bear allegedly ransacked their luxury vehicle. . The plantigrade allegedly attacked their 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost on January 28 in Lake Arrowhead, a mountainous region near Los Angeles. To support their case for compensation, the plaintiffs even provided CCTV footage. This shows the carnivore entering the car, using the door handle and then moving inside, scratching the leather seats.
But these images left the insurance company perplexed. The fraud division of the insurance department then took charge of the case and began an investigation called “Operation Bear Claw”.
“After further review of the video, the investigation determined that the bear was in fact a person in disguise”according to investigators. To confirm this lead, the images were sent to a biologist from the Department of Fauna and Flora, who certified “that it was clearly a human in a bear costume”.
An extinct species in California
Second clue and not the least: although it appears on the state flag, there has been no brown bear in Southern California for a century, recalled the Los Angeles Times in his article. The species, also called California grizzly bear, was hunted and is officially considered extinct in the region since 1924. Rather, they are black bears, smaller than their late cousins, which now abound in this part of the United States. United.
The search carried out in the suspects' den made it possible to find the disguise used for the scam. To wreck the Rolls-Royce, the imposter who had slipped into the skin of a grizzly bear used a kitchen utensil designed to shred meat.
And this wasn't the suspects' only attempt. Investigators discovered that two further claims from different insurance companies were made for two high-end Mercedes, with the same date of loss and location as the Royce-Rolls. For each request, a video of a rabid bear was provided as proof by the fraudsters.
