By David Wagner for LAist
Originally published on April 17, 2026
Topline:
Three Los Angeles County residents who tried to commit insurance fraud by staging attacks on luxury cars using a human-sized bear costume have been convicted for their barely (bear-ly?) believable scheme.
The details: Four people from Glendale and Valley Village claimed to their insurance company in 2024 that a bear had crawled inside their Rolls-Royce Ghost in Lake Arrowhead. They also submitted claims for supposed bear attacks on two Mercedes Benzes.
But when the California Department of Insurance undertook an investigation, dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” it found that videos submitted as part of those claims clearly showed what appeared to be a human wearing a bear suit crawling through the cars, according to wildlife experts.
Caught brown-handed: Department of Insurance officials said a bear costume was later retrieved by detectives who searched the suspects’ home. They said insurance companies lost a total of $141,839 in the scheme.
Fuzzy felons: This week, three of the four people allegedly involved in the plot were convicted. Alfiya Zuckerman, Ruben Tamrazian and Vahe Muradkhanyan all pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud charges and were each sentenced to 180 days in jail, to be served on weekends, as a condition of a two-year probation term.
Ararat Chirkinian is set to return to court for a preliminary hearing in September.
