By Tim Binnall
California authorities arrested four individuals for what they say was a bizarre fraud insurance scheme wherein the suspects reported that a bear had trashed their car, but video evidence revealed that the 'creature' was someone in a costume. The state's Department of Insurance detailed the strange case, which they cleverly dubbed 'Operation Bear Claw,' in a press release on Wednesday. The situation came to their attention when an insurance company alerted them to a suspicious late January claim in which the customer provided security footage seemingly showing that a bear had destroyed the inside of their car.
However, the department said, when their investigators watched the video, they quickly determined that the perpetrator "was actually a person in a bear costume." Remarkably, authorities subsequently found two additional claims to different insurance companies wherein individuals reported that their car had fallen victim to a bear on the same day and at the same location as the first alleged incident. In those instances, the suspects also provided video of the 'creature' getting into their cars and causing a commotion. Certain that they were on to some insurance shenanigans, police searched the home of one of the individuals and their hunch proved correct as cops recovered the bear suit at the center of the weird scheme.