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Three sentenced in California bear-suit insurance fraud scheme

Saturday, 18 April 2026, 18:06 · 1 min read

Three people in Los Angeles have been sentenced to 180 days in jail each after staging fake bear attacks on luxury vehicles to fraudulently claim insurance payouts. The scheme involved one of the conspirators dressing in a bear costume and rummaging through high-end cars — including a Rolls-Royce Ghost and two Mercedes vehicles — at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains, with videos of the staged incidents submitted as evidence of real bear damage. Investigators from the California Department of Insurance consulted a wildlife biologist, who confirmed the figure was human, and detectives later recovered the bear costume during a search of a suspect's home; a fourth accused is due in court in September.

Sources
The GuardianThree people sentenced to jail for bear-suit insurance scam in California ↗︎
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