Some crimes are just more than we can bear.
Case in point: Three Los Angelenos were just convicted on fraud charges in a whole new twist on insurance fraud; they dressed up in bear costumes to cause damage to high-end vehicles. Maybe they were trying to take advantage of some obscure claws in their insurance contracts.
Three Los Angeles-area residents were recently convicted in an unusual insurance fraud scheme using a person in a bear costume to fake attacks on high-end vehicles to collect insurance payouts.
As part of the California Department of Insurance’s Operation Bear Claw, Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village; Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale; and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale, pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud and were sentenced to 180 days in jail and two years of supervised probation and were ordered to pay restitution.
A fourth suspect, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, of Glendale, is scheduled to return to court in September for a preliminary hearing.
Ah, the old “dress up as a bear” gambit. Did they really think this would work? Whatever, these people clearly didn’t paws to think about the consequences of their attempts at fraud.
The investigation began after an insurance company flagged a suspicious claim tied to a Jan. 28, 2024, incident in Lake Arrowhead.
The suspects claimed a bear entered their 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost and caused interior damage, submitting video footage as evidence.
Detectives later determined the “bear” in the video was a person wearing a bear costume and uncovered two additional fraudulent claims submitted to separate insurance companies involving the same date and location but tied to a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350.
As is so often the case, a biologist was the real hero here.
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Honestly, why didn’t they just go with a Bigfoot costume? Or a space alien? It would have worked just about as well. Any country kid bearly out of kindergarten should be able to spot this fraud. I mean, just look at the bear costume:
They clearly didn’t paws to reflect first. pic.twitter.com/WrY2pL9fsL
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) April 17, 2026
In the annals of dumb crooks, these folks have to be among the dumbest. I suppose they were trying to think pawsitively, but they should have foreseen being caught and pelted with criminal charges. And it’s not just the costume, which looks like it came from a novelty Halloween costume shop. A human isn’t built at all like a bear. Everything is wrong, from limb proportion and articulation to the shoulders, hips, and most of all, how bears and humans move their heads is quite different. Contacting a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was the smart thing to do from a procedural standpoint, but as a practical matter, it probably wasn’t really necessary. Although it’s a safe bet the biologist got a good laugh out of it.
Now jail time looms for the confessees. They won’t be furgiven easily for their crimes, and that’s as it should be.
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