Group accused of staging a fake bear attack by making their friend wear a furry costume

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, California. – Four Los Angeles-area residents were arrested Wednesday for allegedly filing false insurance claims claiming three luxury vehicles were damaged by a bear, which investigators say turned out to be a person wearing a bear suit.

According to the state agency, Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale; Ararat Chirkinian, 39, of Glendale; Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale; and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village, are all charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy.

Jail records show Tamrazian, Chirkinian and Muradkhanyan were all arrested Wednesday. Tamrazian was held in lieu of $85,000 bail, while bail for Chirkinian and Muradkhanyan was set at $30,000. Jail records were not immediately available for Zuckerman.

The suspects allegedly claimed to an insurance company that a bear had climbed into their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost in Lake Arrowhead in January and damaged the interior, and they provided video footage to the insurer to support the claim, the DOI said.

“Further examination of the video revealed that the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” the agency said.

Investigators subsequently determined that the same suspects had filed similar insurance claims for damage to two other vehicles at the same location on the same date – a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350 – and they also provided video evidence to accompany these claims.

“To further ensure that it was not actually a bear in the video, the department had a California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist review the three alleged bear videos and they also opined that it was clearly a human in a bear suit,” the Department of Insurance said. “After executing a search warrant, detectives located the bear costume at the suspects’ residence.”

The alleged fraud led to a $141,839 loss for the insurance companies, according to the DOI.

The case is being prosecuted by the San Bernardino County Prosecutor’s Office.