{"id":273208,"date":"2026-04-17T21:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/273208\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:40:09","slug":"3-southern-california-residents-sentenced-in-bear-suit-insurance-fraud-scheme-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/273208\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Southern California residents sentenced in bear suit insurance fraud scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Three Southern California residents have been sentenced in a <a href=\"https:\/\/abc7.com\/post\/4-la-area-residents-accused-using-bear-suit-damage-cars-defraud-insurance-companies-officials-say\/15544020\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:bizarre insurance fraud scheme;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;bizarre insurance fraud scheme&quot;}\" class=\"link \">bizarre insurance fraud scheme<\/a> which prosecutors say involved them staging fake bear attacks on high-end cars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It all stems from a claim the suspects filed with their insurance company, saying a bear got into their car, a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost, at Lake Arrowhead on Jan. 28, 2024, and damaged the inside with scratches. The California Department of Insurance said the suspects provided a video to the company, which showed the &#8220;bear&#8221; in the car.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">An investigation into the claim &#8211; dubbed &#8220;Operation Bear Claw&#8221; &#8211; took a closer look at the video and found the &#8220;bear&#8221; was actually a person in a bear costume, the insurance department said. Investigators then took the video to biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to also look at the video. The biologists said, &#8220;it was clearly a human in a bear suit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Four were arrested in connection with insurance fraud when they claimed a bear damaged their car, but it was a person in a bear costume, officials said<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Investigators uncovered two other fraudulent claims submitted to different insurance companies regarding the same incident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">On Thursday, Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village, Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale, and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale, were sentenced to 180 days in jail and ordered to pay restitution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A fourth suspect, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, of Glendale, still has a pending case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officials say the total cost to the insurance companies was $141,839.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Southern California residents have been sentenced in a bizarre insurance fraud scheme which prosecutors say involved them&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[117933,7,22432,9,8,33343,40418],"class_list":{"0":"post-273208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-bear-attacks","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-department-of-insurance","11":"tag-california-headlines","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-insurance-company","14":"tag-insurance-fraud"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}